Lots of lives depended on us.
Including Brodie.
I’d been fighting to keep the ship stationary, I now put every ounce of effort into trying to lift it again. My body ached with pain as my head felt like it was going to explode. My vision blurred as the ship grew ever closer to the Earth. Now it was only a few thousand feet.
Then a few hundred.
Up! I thought. Lift up!
It slowed again. I urged the ship to slow with every fiber of my being. At the same time, my head felt like it’d been squeezed in a vice. The crushing pain inside my skull was excruciating.
The ship slowed once more. Now it was directly above a farmer’s field. The makeshift rockets touched the field, and the crop instantly burst into flame. I put one final bit of focus into lifting the ship—
It slammed into the ground.
An enormous plume of dirt erupted into the air. Sections of the ship collapsed, and pieces flew off in all directions. From my height above the ship, it was impossible to tell if the entire craft had been destroyed in the collision or if it was still intact.
I started towards it—and that’s when it happened. I’d evaporated the platform, so now all I had to control was my own ability to fly. Except I couldn’t seem to see straight. My head was aching badly. I had to reach the ground, or I’d fall out of the sky. Heading for a small hill, I was aware that my vision was growing darker with every passing second. Just before I landed, it had narrowed to a tunnel filled with only a patch of grass in the center.
Everything went black.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The instant I woke up and opened my eyes, I knew my entire world had changed completely. My eyes were open, but I couldn’t see.
I’m blind.
Lying on my back in the field, my hands raked my face in desperation until I finally touched my eyes in horror. My eyes were open—wide open—and yet I couldn’t see a thing. It had been a bright sunny day a few minutes before. I’d been flying towards a hill surrounded by trees. Long grass covered the top. It was in that long grass that I’d landed.
It was impossible to determine how much time had passed. It could have been minutes or hours or days. And maybe it made no difference anyway. I was blind. A sob rose up within me. I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. Every inch of my body ached. The terrible pain in my head had passed, but it had been replaced by a dull pulsing throb. The sensation was worst behind my eyes.
Weeping, I fell back into the grass and closed my eyes as tightly as I could. Maybe this was temporary. Maybe it would take a few seconds to pass. Keeping my eyes shut, I counted till I got to sixty before I opened them again.
I saw only inky blackness. Wiping away tears, I somehow got to my feet and tried to remember the layout of the landscape. There’d been a patchwork of fields, fences, patches of forest, and a narrow, curving river. Closing my eyes again, I pressed the palms of my hands into my eye sockets and kept my eyes shut for another minute. I finally reopened them.
Darkness.
The sound of a blue jay echoed across the field. From further away came the faint drone of an engine. The sun felt warm on my skin. A breeze tugged at a stray hair on my brow. An insect bounced off my cheek. The whine of it melted away to nothing.
I wanted to scream.
Somehow I fought the impulse and took a series of deep breaths. My head still ached, but at least now, the rest of my body had eased to a dull throb. Clutching my head, I felt something wet on my hand. It had to be blood. I’d probably hit my head when I landed.
Did that cause my blindness?
This could be temporary. Regardless, I had to find Brodie and the others. I had to know if they’d survived the crash or not. Survival was the first order of business. I had to find others. To do that, I needed to find houses. Roads. Fences.
I started walking. Holding my hands out in front of me, I felt only long grass. My last memory wasn’t of crops. This was simply a grassy knoll in a farmer’s field. At some point, I would meet a fence. That would lead to another fence. Sooner or later I’d come across a person.
Excuse me? Will you help a blind boy?
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to surrender myself to peals of laughter and lie down on the grass until I choked to death on my hysteria.
Shut up! Stay focused!
After the first few minutes, I headed down a gently sloping hill. I began to feel a little more confident. Encountering a stream would be another good sign. Where there was water, there was sure to be people. I just had to—
My left foot met empty air.
Stumbling forward, I threw my hands out, and instead, something slammed into the left side of my face. For a moment, I didn’t know up from down. I thought I was being attacked, and I punched out wildly. Then I realized I was lying on the ground against some sort of rocky outcrop. A kind of helpless rage consumed me; I’d fallen over. That was all. Crawling away from the stony projection, I found soft earth again, and I began to pummel it with my fists.
Screaming and crying, I hit it repeatedly until my energy was gone. My head finally grew dizzy, and I fell into another deep silent sleep. There were dreams, but they were the dreams of a sighted boy. He had a girlfriend that he loved, but he hadn’t told her. She was walking away from him. As she turned back, he saw her lips and her nose and the gentle curve of her cheeks, but she had no eyes.
No eyes.
When I awoke again, I heard distant sounds. Engines. Voices. I lifted my head slightly. I knew the sound of those engines. They weren’t from motor vehicles. They were from—
Helicopters.
Opening my eyes, something moved before me. A blur. Grass.
Light.
I let out a cry—a squeak of astonishment. I blinked a few times. With each blink, my vision returned a little more. Staring down at my hands, they slowly came back into focus.
I can see!
Running ecstatically across the field, I followed a helicopter as it disappeared over a stand of trees. Beyond the trees lay the wreckage of the spacecraft. Somewhere over there was Brodie and the rest of the team. Scrambling over a fence, I tore through the sparse wood to the other side.
People and aliens were everywhere. The army was trying to secure some sort of order. A system was in place, but barely. At least there were survivors. I pushed through clusters of people. Ambulances waited on the other side of the field.
‘Axel!’
The voice came from behind me.
Brodie.
Tears filled her eyes as she pushed past two army officers, and then she was in my arms, and her lips were against mine. After what seemed an eternity, I drew back from her and examined her face. I never wanted to leave her again. I wanted to spend the rest of my life gazing into her beautiful blue eyes.
I didn’t hear the cry the first time, and it only registered dimly with me when they spoke again.
‘That’s him!’ the voice said.
I turned to see Agent Palmer from The Agency. Fury filled her face as she pointed at me. Soldiers flanked her on both sides.
‘That’s him,’ she snarled. ‘I want him arrested immediately!’
Chapter Thirty-Four
Morgan Le Fay adjusted the controls on the console and examined the readings. She gave a satisfied grunt. The quantum resonator supplied by the Tagaar was working correctly. It would still take some time to calibrate the systems, but there was no reason why her adjustments to the Solar Accelerator wouldn’t succeed.
She stepped back from the equipment. The inside of the building looked like any high tech laboratory with banks of computer screens lining the walls. The only outstanding feature in the room was the mixing chamber. It looked more like a World War II concrete bunker than something that belonged in a lab. A series of titanium rods like the fingers of a giant hand were located on one side of the chamber. On the other side lay the bowl that accelerated the energy stream. When the Accelerator was activated, the rods slid into the chamber and began the—
Frowning, Morgan stepped from the building into the afternoon light. A Tagaar warship—uncloaked—was coming into land.
‘Now that’s something you don’t see every day,’ she said.
Morgan waited till it had landed and watched Graal and his men disembark. Something was wrong. She could see that immediately. Still, there was no reason why her plan would be affected. Graal marched up the stone path to the installation as his men quickly vacated the spacecraft to fan out down the hill.
‘Hello, Graal,’ Morgan said. ‘What a lovely surprise.’
‘How are your plans progressing?’ he asked.
Always the conversationalist.
‘Very well,’ she answered. ‘I’ll be ready in a few hours.’ She looked past Graal. ‘What are your men doing? I thought—’
‘Our plans have changed,’ he interrupted.
‘In what way?’
‘The Earthlings know we’re here on Earth. This makes your own weapon all the more important.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I wasn’t showing gratitude. I was simply stating a fact.’ He glanced across the island. ‘Our instruments show this island’s communications have been cut off from the mainland.’
Morgan nodded. ‘I installed a dampening device.’
‘Good. My men can hunt in peace.’
What a vicious species, Morgan thought. It’s a shame they’re so ugly. We would have made a good match.
The alien followed her into the central laboratory. He glanced around at the equipment, his eyes finally settling on the Tagaar modules that now interfaced with the Solar Accelerator.
‘How exactly does this weapon work?’ Graal glanced sideways at Morgan. ‘I find it hard to believe a human could create such a device.’
‘I’ve been around.’ Morgan smiled sweetly. ‘This is an experimental base designed to study the flow of electrons from the sun. The scientists have been experimenting with feeding a stream of electrons into the Accelerator chamber.’
‘With what purpose?’
‘To supply energy. Once the stream is tethered to the Accelerator, it sets up a continuous link back to its source.’
‘The sun?’
Morgan nodded. ‘The idea is to accelerate the flow so that an endless supply of free energy is available,’ she explained.
‘It sounds very primitive,’ Graal said, scrutinizing the equipment. ‘Surely, fission is a better system.’
‘That technology hasn’t been invented yet.’
‘I see.’ He peered at the quantum resonator connected to the computer. ‘And why did you need our equipment?’
‘Your device will enable me to boost the input into the chamber and then feed it back at the sun.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning I can build a massive explosion on its surface.’ She paused. ‘You’re probably familiar with an EMP?’
‘Electromagnetic Pulse?’
‘Exactly. The detonation of an EMP can knock out electricity across an entire city. Once the power fails, so does communication, transport, and everything else that holds a civilization together.’ She pointed to the mixing chamber. ‘The Solar Accelerator will create an explosion on the sun’s surface so massive that electricity across the planet will be knocked out for months. The human race will be reduced to savagery. Chaos will reign.’
Graal nodded approvingly. This woman annoyed him with her confidence, but he admired her lack of ethics. It was rare to find in a species and even rarer in a woman.
‘Millions will die in the short term,’ Graal said, thoughtfully. ‘And many more millions in the ensuing weeks. When the Tagaar arrive, we will be greeted as heroes as we help to ‘rebuild’ this world.’ It was a brilliant plan. A scheme worthy of a Tagaar warrior. He peered closely at the woman. ‘Are you sure you’re human?’
‘Please,’ Morgan tittered. ‘A girl’s got to have some secrets.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
I was in trouble. Big trouble. No sooner had Agent Palmer seen me than I was arrested and dragged to a waiting military truck. Chad was already in the back, handcuffed and furious. I was pushed inside and handcuffed to the seat opposite him.
‘What do they think they’re doing?’ he demanded. ‘We just stopped that ship from crashing. We just—’
‘I know,’ I agreed. ‘But I just kidnapped the President of Russia and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. They might be unhappy about that.’
Chad clamped his mouth shut. He looked like he wanted to say something else, but at that moment, a military commander appeared at the doorway of the truck. The man was square-jawed with a gray crew cut; he looked like he was carved from granite. A realization slowly struck me as he climbed into the back of the van. He was from the military. The American military. Most of the people milling around the crashed spacecraft were soldiers. And Agent Palmer was flanked by soldiers. It looked like The Agency and the US Government were suddenly much closer.
The man settled onto the seat beside me. ‘I’m General Clarke,’ he said. ‘And you’re the boys who have caused us so much trouble.’
‘You should be pinning medals on us!’ Chad said. ‘Not arresting us.’
‘I’d say the chances of you boys receiving a medal are about as likely as Amelia Earhart becoming President.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re both in serious trouble.’
‘You can’t hold us,’ Chad said. ‘We can break free any time we want.’
‘I know about your powers,’ the General said. ‘And you know you could simply break free of those handcuffs. You really do have powers far beyond those of mortal man.’ He looked at me. ‘But trust me when I say that we could retaliate with enormous force. You don’t want to have the might of the United States war machine against you.’
‘But—’ I began.
Clarke held up a hand. ‘I know why you pulled this crazy stunt,’ he said. ‘That’s all been explained to me. And you indeed saved thousands of lives today.’
‘If that ship had hit the Earth—’
‘All right. You saved millions of lives, but you also stole a deadly weapon. You infiltrated Russian airspace. You attacked Russian armed forces. You kidnapped the President of Russia, Alexi Kozlov. You—’
‘It was me,’ I said, shooting a look at Chad. ‘It had nothing to do with Chad. I was the one who broke those laws.’
‘We both know that’s only partly true,’ General Clarke said. ‘You could go to jail for any one of those offenses. Considering everything you’ve done—son, are you all right?’
He was staring at the front of my shirt. I looked down. There was blood on my shirt. I touched my face with my cuffed hands. I had a nose bleed. Before I could speak, the world began to spin, and then everything went dark.
When I awoke, I found myself in a hospital bed. I sat up with a groan. My head hurt again. There were other beds in the room, but they were empty. A man hurried in with a chart. It took me a moment to recognize Doctor Williams from The Agency. The slim black man was the one who’d been doing tests to discover why my powers were intermittent. I started to get out of bed.
‘Hey there,’ he said. ‘Not so fast.’
He pushed me back onto the bed.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘You tell me. Apparently, you passed out in mid-conversation.’
He asked me a series of questions and wrote down my replies on his notepad. When he asked me if I’d been exerting myself over the last few days, I simply laughed and fell silent.
‘Out with it,’ he demanded. ‘In detail.’
So I told him about the flight to Russia and everything that had happened since. He looked downright worried when I told him about my temporary blindness. When I finished speaking, he simply shook his head and laid down the clipboard.
‘I was afraid this would happen,’ he said. ‘Your powers have been in a constant state of flux since you were modified. Now I think you
’ve exerted yourself so much that you’ve…well…’
‘What?’
‘You’ve fried your circuits. You’re in danger of giving yourself a stroke, a brain hemorrhage, or worse if you continue to use your powers.’
The color drained from my face. ‘That’s…that’s not possible.’
‘Not only is it possible, but it’s likely. You’re a time bomb waiting to happen.’
A knock from the door. I glanced at the doctor. ‘Does that doctor-patient confidentiality stuff—’ I started.
‘Apply? Of course.’
‘Then please keep this to yourself.’
The door opened, and Brodie burst in.
‘Axel!’ she cried.
We had our second reunion in as many hours. Brodie climbed onto the hospital bed and held me close as I contemplated what the doctor had told me. A stroke…brain hemorrhage…was there any good news? I asked her again about the events of the last few days, and she filled me in.
Then she took my hand and looked into my eyes. ‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ she said.
‘What? Tried to save you?’
‘But the Russian President—’
‘I couldn’t shoot him,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t use the Stonekiller on him. I wanted to, but it just wasn’t in me.’
‘Good.’
‘But I would have done just about anything to save you,’ I said. ‘You’re the girl I love.’
She kissed me again. That made everything worthwhile. Almost.
Tears filled her eyes. ‘We’re on the move again,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t you know—’ She stopped herself. ‘Of course, you don’t. We’re on board an American Military Craft called the Helix. It’s like a Flex fighter, but about a thousand times larger. We’re on our way to Scotland.’
Teen Superheroes Box Set | Books 1-7 Page 45