“We left Avatar’s spot on the roster vacant all these years in the hopes you would one day prove your worthiness to fill it. The fact you survived the challenges we threw at you and made your way here shows that you are worthy. Worthy, but not yet ready for the crisis that is on the horizon. As Seer said, the greatest threat the world has ever known grows closer. The world needs you to be ready for it. And you need us to help you become ready. We can help you find the Omega weapon. We can help you reach your full potential. We can help you become the world’s champion. We can help you be the Hero you were meant to be. The Hero the world needs you to be.”
“Are you insane?” I couldn’t stop myself from yelling. “You killed my father. You tried to kill me. You’re just a bunch of murderous thugs! And now you want me to forget about all that and train under you? For what? Because of some save the world fairy tale you might have made up to trick me? Because of fame? Money? You want me to betray the memory of my father for thirty pieces of silver?”
Mechano’s clenched fist hit the table. The blow was so hard I felt the vibration of the impact through the floor. As one of the world’s richest men and a Sentinel, he likely wasn’t used to someone speaking to him in any way other than worshipfully.
“We did what we had to do,” Mechano exclaimed in a raised voice. “There are forces afoot in the world that would annihilate every man, woman and child if they had the means to do so. Chaos, Doctor Alchemy, and others you likely have not even heard of would set fire to the world just to watch it burn. The Sentinels stand against them. We will continue to do what it takes to safeguard the world and the people in it. Even if it means killing a thousand fathers. The lives of the many outweigh the lives of the few.”
Mechano stopped, perhaps composing himself. With his unmoving inhuman face, it was impossible to tell. I hated him at that moment more than I have hated anyone or anything.
Mechano continued in a more measured tone. “The world needs a champion, not a semi-literate scared boy afraid of his own shadow who had barely stepped foot off his family’s scraggly farm. Because of what we did, what we needed to do, you stand here, a licensed Hero. If we hadn’t taken the decisive actions we did, you would still be living in the boondocks, pulling up weeds and picking ticks out of your belly button.”
Despite his insulting tone, I had to admit he had me there. I never wanted to be a superhero, even after my powers manifested. If Iceburn killing Dad hadn’t provided the catalyst for me to pursue Heroic training, I likely would still be in South Carolina, as far from the world of Heroes and Rogues as imaginable, cowering from bullies and trying to figure out how to get girls to like me.
If it was true that the world faced some huge threat and that the host of the Omega spirit was the key to combating it, then either killing me to make way for a more likely world-saver or forcing me to step up and prove my capacity to be that world-saver had a certain ruthless, icy logic to it. Viewed through that prism, I could understand why the Sentinels had acted as they had.
On the other hand, the Sentinels had taken the same Hero’s Oath that I had. I was certain I’d remember if the words “feel free to murder in pursuit of the greater good” was in the Oath. I would never do what they had done. Isaac, Neha, the Old Man, Athena . . . no Hero I respected would. The bloodthirsty way the Trials had been conducted had made me suspect there was something rotten in the world of Heroes, and the callous behavior of these three Heroic paragons confirmed it. The Sentinels were so focused on the big picture that they seemed to have lost all sense of right and wrong. In pursuit of protecting mankind, they had lost sight of protecting individual men.
Mechano steepled his metal fingers in front of himself. It was an odd mannerism coming from a robot. “Allow me to sweeten the pot of joining us a little. Millennium is an Omega-level Meta like you, only in his case because he had the good fortune to be born with the right and exceedingly rare combination of genetics instead of because he is infused with the Omega spirit. Among his many other talents is the ability to time travel. If you cooperate with us in averting the coming threat, after it is all over he can take you back in time. You can save the life of your father.” His words confirmed my earlier suspicions—the Sentinels had led me through the mansion so I would be sure to see the stuffed saber-toothed tiger and the short-faced bear. They had been setting me up to believe time travel was possible.
“How do I know you’re not lying to me?” I asked, hopeful despite myself at the possibility of saving Dad’s life.
“Because we have been so forthcoming to you about what we have done to you and your family. Why would we suddenly start lying to you now? You can trust us.”
Hah! I trusted these murderers as much as I would a nest of rattlesnakes. Less actually, since rattlesnakes only struck when they were hunting or defending themselves. These three vipers used violence as a tool of manipulation. “How about we save my father first, and then the world second?” I suggested.
“No,” Mechano said firmly. “To be frank, the prospect of saving your father is a carrot to ensure your compliance with our wishes. Without it, you are likely to pretend to comply, gather evidence against us, and report us to the Guild at the earliest opportunity.”
“What’s to stop me from reporting you to the Guild right this instant?”
“You have no proof of the things we have told you today. I scanned you quite thoroughly when you came in. You are not concealing any recording devices. Iceburn, the blonde woman in the Washington bank, Brown Recluse—all were hired through a string of intermediaries and third parties. Even if they told the Guild everything they knew, the trail would never lead back to us. We have been Heroes at the highest levels for a long time. I can assure you we were quite careful to cover our tracks. In short, if you report what we have told you today to the Guild, it would be your word against ours. The word of a young man whose just recently donned his cape versus the word of three of the preeminent Heroes in the world?” Mechano’s voice was amused.
“Put yourself in the shoes of the Guild’s investigation unit. Whom would you believe? The Guild will conclude that you’re defaming the good name of three respected Heroes and punish you instead. You might even lose your license over it. You certainly will if I anonymously provide evidence to the Guild that you cheated during the Trials. Yes, of course I know all about that. As I said before, Hacker is quite good, but not good enough to completely shield from me what she accomplished when she went rooting around in Overlord’s system. Not only would you lose your license, but Hacker and Myth would as well. They might even go to jail over it. Cheating to obtain a Hero’s license is a very serious matter and a crime. You would ruin their lives as well as your own.
“With that said, I cannot help but add that I admire how you handled that supposedly no-win situation to give both you and your friend a chance to get your licenses. It reminds me of something I might do.” I supposed he meant it as a compliment, but he couldn’t have insulted me more had he tried. I didn’t want to be like this metallic dirtbag in any way, shape, or form.
“What do you say, Mr. Conley?” Mechano asked. “Join us. Together, we will save the world. And then your father.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Regrettably, I have to admit that we cannot take no for an answer. The stakes are simply too high. Not only for the world, but for you and your friends. If you do not cooperate, I can assure you it will not go well for either you or them. Though we would prefer to deal with you as you are now a known quantity, we will deal with your successor host to the Omega spirit if we must.”
Well, there is was. As explicit a threat to my life as if Mechano had said he’d slit my throat if I didn’t go along with the Sentinels’ plans. He was threatening Neha’s and Isaac’s lives, too. I knew Sentry showing footage of them had been no accident. Not that I needed to hear Mechano threaten me to know the threat was there. I wasn’t so stupid as to think the Sentinels would simply let me walk about of here with a pat on the back and a
hearty handshake if I turned their proposal down.
The Situation Room was quiet as a tomb as my mind grappled with this dilemma. Maybe the Sentinels had told the truth. Maybe there was a massive threat on the horizon I could help thwart. They certainly were right about me being the new Omega host. Cassandra was confirmation of that. If they were also right about an approaching threat, didn’t I have an obligation as a sworn Hero to try to protect the world, even if it meant I would throw my lot in for a while with these manipulative murderers? I could bring them to justice as soon as the threat had abated. I’d be even more powerful by then and be better able to do so. And, Mechano was right: Right now, I had no hard evidence of the Sentinels’ misdeeds. Later, maybe I would have enough evidence to prove their guilt to the rest of the Guild.
Plus, if I did cooperate, maybe Millennium really could use his powers to help me go back in time and save Dad. Maybe I could save Hannah and Hammer, too. The saber-toothed tiger and the short-faced bear I’d seen had been tangible evidence of Millennium’s abilities. I didn’t understand how saving Dad would work as I likely never would have become a Hero if Dad hadn’t died, but I was no expert on time travel. If the Academy had a class on time travel paradoxes, I missed it.
So, here’s what was in the pro join the Sentinels column: Save the world. Save Dad. Save Mom. Save Hannah. Save Hammer. Don’t be murdered so the Omega spirit would be forced into someone else. Don’t get my friends murdered.
Those were all some pretty good pros.
On the other hand was a giant con: The thought of working with these scheming murderers made my stomach churn and my skin crawl. Why should I reward their bad behavior by doing as they wished? I had no desire to associate further with these scumbags. Dad had been fond of telling me to be careful of the company I kept because you picked up the habits of the people you hung around with. You become who you associate with, came the words of his Jamesism to my mind. I didn’t want to become like these three, who manipulated people like they were merely pieces on a chessboard and sacrificed them like their lives didn’t matter.
No! Screw the Sentinels. I would not join them. These so-called Heroes were nothing but overpowered bullies. As bad as the Three Horsemen, Elemental Man, Antonio, and the other bullies I’d dealt with all my life were, they paled in comparison to these three Sentinels. The Sentinels should’ve been on the Mount Rushmore of bullies. They had killed my father, a good man who did the best he could all his life. He had done nothing wrong other than have a son who inexplicably was chosen to be the Omega. I would not hitch my wagon to these tarnished stars. If the world really was threatened and I was the key to saving it—God help us!—I would have to find a way to deal with it without these three. They weren’t the only Heroes in the world who could help me. Isaac, Neha, Amazing Man, Truman, Athena, perhaps even the other Sentinels . . . there were far better Heroes to associate with. I had a hard time imagining worse.
That all was what I thought.
What I said was, “You’re right. You did what you needed to do to make sure I’m the right person to help you deal with the upcoming threat. I can’t say I’m happy about what you did to my father, but I can understand it. Besides, after this is all over, perhaps we’ll go back in time and save him.” I sighed. “I’ll join you. I want you to help me save the world.”
The room was silent as a tomb again for a few moments. I felt my heart beating.
Mechano’s head swiveled slightly toward Seer.
“His vital signs indicate he is attempting to mislead us,” he said. “Your thoughts?”
Seer’s white eyes burned into mine for a moment.
“He’s lying,” she said definitively. “He will betray us to the Guild as soon as he is able. Though the boy is our best hope to combat the upcoming threat, we will have to take our chances with the next Omega. Hopefully he or she will be more pliable than this one.” Seer shook her head sadly. “Kill him.”
Mechano’s head swiveled back to me.
“A shame,” he said. “I rather liked this one. He is far less sanctimonious than Avatar was.”
His single eye glowed bright red, like an exploding sun.
CHAPTER 19
An energy blast from Mechano’s eye hit me like a Mack truck. Though I had my personal shield up already—if you’re foolish enough to walk into the lion’s den, you’d better have your chair and whip ready—the force of the blast was still enough to sling me far across the Situation Room. I slammed against the far wall with a massive, bone-rattling thud.
Mechano’s energy blast continued to push against the spherical contours of my force field, pinning me against the wall. I felt like a bug caught in the pressurized spray of a water hose. The force of it began to push me into the metal wall, like a pressing thumb making an ever-expanding dent in a soda can.
In movies, fights were always loud. Between the soaring soundtrack and the sounds of the fight itself, you could barely hear yourself think when you watched them. It’s understandable they should be loud. Movies were supposed to hold your interest, not lull you to sleep. But real fights often weren’t like movies. There were often sounds of exertion and smacks of impact, but not nearly the kinds or levels of sound you heard in movie fights. Sometimes real fights were so quiet, you could almost hear a pin drop.
This one was like that. The fact it was relatively quiet did not make it less terrifying.
The sustained blast of energy from Mechano’s eye didn’t make a sound, either as it passed through the air or as it pressed implacably against my force field. The only sound was that of the metal of the wall behind me as it crunched and twisted, beginning to warp around me like a custom-made coffin.
There wasn’t much noise, but my other senses were overwhelmed. I felt a mounting pressure all over, but especially on my forehead and chest, like someone had stepped on top of me while I’d been lying down, and he was getting heavier and heavier by the second. The brightness of the sustained energy blast was blinding. It was like being inside a fireworks display. There was the smell of burning ozone as Mechano’s blast cut through the air. The smell was so sharp, I could taste it. Was it a laser? Something electricity based? Something else entirely? It didn’t matter. Whether you were burned to death or shocked to death, either way you were just as dead.
I fought to maintain my shield as Mechano’s energy blast pummeled it with a force unlike any I had ever felt before. I struggled to absorb the massive energy of the blast. I felt like a kitchen sponge trying to absorb all the water in a swimming pool.
“I will find the right frequency to pierce your force field soon enough,” I heard Mechano say over the harsh sounds of metal twisting and rending around me. “Stop resisting, and I will end this painlessly.” My mind was too preoccupied and my teeth were too clenched for me to tell him to go screw himself. My eyes squeezed tight against the blinding light, which still stabbed at them like knitting needles despite being closed. My will started to flag a little, like an exhausted swimmer who wanted to give into the violent current he struggled against.
Hold on! Just a little longer! I told myself. The absorbed energy filled every cell of my body, threatening to slop over and make me explode like an overcharged battery.
“Stop!” Seer said sharply. “You’re playing into his hands!”
Too late, I thought. The words were barely out of Seer’s mouth before Mechano’s energy beam managed to pierce my shielding. For a split second, my body was bathed in the energy completely unprotected by my force field. I likely would have been burned to ash instantaneously had the energy I had absorbed not given me a tiny bit of protection. Even so, it felt like I had plunged into a vat of boiling oil. Time to go.
With a thought, I reformed my force field that was now useless against Mechano’s energy blast. I turned it from spherical to cylindrical with a tapered end. It went from being like a shield to being like a bullet casing. Using the energy I had absorbed from Mechano as propellant, I shot straight up, faster and more forcefully
than I ever would have been able without Mechano’s absorbed energy.
I sliced through the wall I’d been pushed into like a hot knife cutting through butter. I rose like a rocket, leaving a deep groove from top to bottom in the tall metal wall. I punched through the Situation Room’s reinforced ceiling as quickly as a wink, leaving the Sentinels behind. Blurred images of the mansion raced by faster than my mind could process as I punched through one floor of the mansion after another. It was eerily quiet inside my force field despite the pandemonium I must have caused in the mansion. I realized I must be traveling faster than the speed of sound, hence the silence within my personal shield.
The night sky filled my field of vision. I slowed to a halt as quickly as I could without risking turning my internal organs into pâté by stopping too abruptly.
I quickly took stock as I hung high in the night air over Sentinels Mansion. I had gotten the answers I’d sought. I was in pain and hurt badly, but I was alive. When facing people like the Sentinels, I’d count surviving as a victory. The escape plan I had formulated when I first entered the Situation Room had worked. Even though I was apparently the Omega, I had known the moment I laid eyes on the three Sentinels I would be outclassed if a fight broke out. They were simply too experienced and too powerful for me to take them down on my own. I’d known the moment I’d walked into the Situation Rom that, if push came to shove, I shouldn’t try to shove back. I should run. He who fights and runs away lives to fight another day.
The problem was, there was no way I would be able to make it from the Situation Room back to the mansion’s front door. I had simply gotten too twisted around in the maze-like mansion. Using my telekinesis to penetrate the walls and ceiling of the mansion to escape were out too, as they had proved immune to my powers. Also, I had suspected they were too reinforced against possible Rogue attacks to permit them to be penetrated by me at my usual power level.
Sentinels Page 22