Vanguard Prime Book 1

by Steven Lochran

  Dr Salim stands in front of the door and folds his arms.

  Machina raises an eyebrow at him. ‘You don’t think I’m more than capable of moving you?’

  ‘Not without hurting me,’ Dr Salim says. ‘And I don’t know if you could have it on your conscience to injure an innocent bystander.’

  ‘You’re not a bystander. You’re just standing in my way.’ Machina’s eyes spark and her exo-suit flows over her in an instant, forming the torso and arm-plating, multiplying her strength significantly.

  Dr Salim doesn’t budge.

  ‘Machina!’ I say, stepping between them. ‘Maybe … maybe Dr Salim is right. Maybe we should just stay here. It’s not like we could really do anything –’

  There’s a loud bang on the door, making us all jump.

  ‘This is Lieutenant Jennifer McHendrie of the Nurse Corps! I have an injured crew member with me here! We need assistance!’

  Dr Salim glances once at Machina and me before turning to open the door. The Lieutenant comes charging through the doorway carrying an ensign who’s clutching a bloody wound in his side.

  ‘Thanks,’ she gasps. ‘The path to the lifeboats is blocked and the roof of the medical bay has caved in.’

  Dr Salim helps the ensign onto one of the tables and gathers up the medical supplies.

  ‘I’m Dr Salim, part of Team Alpha. I’m not much use in the way of helping with injuries, although we’ve already dealt with one today.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ the Lieutenant says. ‘And who’s “we”?’

  It’s at this stage I assume that Dr Salim starts looking around. Because in all the confusion, Machina’s retracted her armour, grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the air duct. It’s a tight squeeze but we make it in, and we do it so fast there’s no time to worry whether or not this is a good idea.

  And as we start crawling towards whatever’s next, two questions keep repeating themselves to me over and over: How on earth did I end up here? And how on earth does Machina think I’m going to be of any help to her?

  Gymnasium 3, Starboard Deck

  Metal hits metal, again and again, and sparks flash through the air. Cronus’s blows come faster and faster, immense rage building behind each one.

  And Gaia is tiring.

  After crashing through into the gym from the upper deck, Cronus had found a pair of giant weights and immediately made use of them. Using her blade to deflect each of his blows, Gaia feels the weapon tremble in her hands with every strike, the intense vibrations growing more and more painful.

  Knowing she has to break free of this barrage, Gaia whips her hand up and sends a wave of flames rushing at her opponent just as he swings the weights behind his head to bring them down in another devastating blow.

  The fire engulfs him, sending him stumbling back-wards. Quick to seize her advantage, Gaia launches herself at Cronus. First she punches him with super-powered strength, and when the heat of his scorched metal proves too much she switches to fly kicks and strikes from her sword.

  Overwhelmed by the assault, Cronus stumbles.

  ‘That’s it, monster!’ Gaia says through gritted teeth. ‘Fall! Fall!’

  She throws another kick for good measure, but it’s caught in the bear trap of his giant fist. In one fluid motion he spins around and throws her at the far wall.

  KRRRK!

  She smashes through the pipework in an inferno of sparks and wreckage.

  Cronus follows quickly after her …

  There’s a sound in the distance, like war drums or rolling thunder or giants trying to kill each other. It reverberates through the entire ship, and down here in the darkness it feels so much more ominous.

  I’m crawling on my hands and knees behind Machina through the ship’s ducting. The night vision in my V-suit’s visor is helping, but the shadows still linger at the edge like gathering storm clouds.

  ‘We can use this air duct to access one of the elevator shafts,’ Machina is saying. ‘From there, we should be able to get to the level that the Gallery is on.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ I mumble.

  ‘I just hope the door systems are still in operation, otherwise getting through them might prove difficult.’ She pauses but I don’t respond. ‘Are you listening to me?’

  ‘Yep,’ I say.

  ‘Well, a little acknowledgement of what I’m saying wouldn’t hurt.’

  I come to a halt. Machina keeps crawling on for a few moments before she notices that I’m not right behind her. She turns her head to look at me, and just as she’s opening her mouth to speak, I say, ‘I think you should go on without me.’

  ‘What?’ she asks with a confused sneer.

  ‘I think you should go on without me. I’ll just get in your way.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ She pulls herself up into a crouching position. ‘You’re part of this team, and if you haven’t noticed we’re kind of in the middle of a situation here.’

  ‘I’m not going to do you or anyone else any good. I’ll probably only make things worse.’

  Machina doesn’t reply. She just crouches in the dark staring at me. Now I’m wishing I didn’t have night vision so I couldn’t see the furious expression on her face.

  ‘Look …’ I say, trying to explain. ‘When I first got my powers I … well, after I got them, I looked up “neohuman” on the internet, trying to find … I don’t know, some kind of reason for all this.’

  ‘And?’ she says flatly.

  ‘And there’s no official explanation for how our powers work, or even where they come from. All these scientists in the world and not one of them has an answer. Aliens, pollution, evolution … they don’t know.’

  ‘I’m failing to see the point of this,’ Machina says.

  ‘My getting powers is completely unexplainable and totally random. So how is it fair to expect me to slap on a costume and suddenly be some kind of hero?’ I ask.

  ‘Because something, whether it be God or Fate or Evolutionary Quirk, has chosen us for something greater,’ she replies without missing a beat. ‘And when you’re presented with a Calling like that, you can either accept it and strive to become great, or you can slink off into the shadows. Your choice.’

  Machina turns away and starts to crawl off down the tunnel. I frown and look behind me, back the way we came. Then I let out a frustrated sigh and follow Machina.

  For the next ten minutes the only sound is the scraping of our hands and knees against metal.

  The silence is finally broken by our arrival at the elevator shaft. Machina spots it before I do, which means I crawl face-first into her butt and nearly knock her down into the abyss.

  ‘Hey! Watch it!’ she practically yells at me.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, peering over the edge of the shaft. It stretches so far down it may as well be a bottomless pit. There’s not an elevator in sight. ‘Can you use your powers to –?’

  ‘Signal the elevator? I’ve been trying that, but I’m not getting any response. The power must have been cut off to this area. We’ll have to find another way down.’

  Her eyes flash in the dark, breaking the shadows, and the liquid metal of her nanobots slides up over her and solidifies into her armour, minus the helmet. She launches herself into the void and for one long, horrifying moment she’s falling and I think it’s all over. Then there’s the sound of thrusters sparking into life and we’re suddenly face to face.

  ‘Look, don’t get weird about it but I’ve read your personnel file,’ she says, hovering in front of me. ‘From what I understand of your powers, if you hit the right speed you’ll be able to control your descent. You can corkscrew down along the walls. All you have to do is trust yourself.’

  I look at her, and I look down at the perfect darkness that swallows up the elevator shaft. It looks like a pit leading to Hell.

  ‘I can’t,’ I say.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You can.’

  ‘No. No, I can’t.’

  Her eyes shift and I’m reminded of
the concern she showed for me in the Red Death simulation.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I can carry you.’

  I’ve had more than my fair share of embarrassing moments in life. There was the pants-wetting-at-kindergarten incident, and the time I sat in chocolate pudding but didn’t know about it until after I got home from school, when the jokes everyone had been making all day finally made sense. That was only marginally worse than the time Zachary Bell told Amanda Welsh I’d been in love with her since the second grade.

  Of all those embarrassing moments, however, I’d say being carried in Machina’s arms as she jetted her way down the elevator shaft definitely rates at the top of the list.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d had one arm slung over her shoulder like we were both soldiers and I was injured and she was getting me out of the jungle before an airstrike dropped napalm on the whole area. No, the whole thing was made so much more humiliating because she carried me bodily in her arms, like Superman with Lois Lane.

  And I was Lois Lane. I should have just tried running.

  We jet down the shaft slowly but steadily, and before too long we’ve reached the bottom. The lighting here is low and cold, pierced only by the LEDs on Machina’s armour. I jump from her arms before she’s ready to put me down, and I land clumsily.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say, unable to look her in the eye.

  ‘Unnecessary,’ she mumbles. She switches off her jets as the armour plating on her shoulder starts to ripple, forming a floodlight that she switches on to illuminate our surrounds.

  ‘No, seriously. Thank you very much.’

  She turns on me, furious, and I suddenly realise I’ve misunderstood her.

  ‘I meant that that whole display was unnecessary, you git! I understand that this place can be overwhelming when you first show up, but you’re not even trying anymore! You’re giving up without even fighting! Why?’

  ‘You’re the one who’s read my personnel file. You work it out,’ I say, turning my back on her to look for a way out. The doors are sealed shut, and no amount of trying to pry them open works. Not that that stops me trying.

  ‘What’s your file got to do with anything?’

  ‘It didn’t say?’

  ‘Didn’t say what?’

  ‘What happened. On the day I got my powers.’ I’m trying desperately now to open the doors, straining with every tiny gram of muscle I have.

  Machina crosses her arms as she watches me. ‘I didn’t read that part.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re even doing reading it in the first place. Shouldn’t that stuff be classified?’

  ‘It was. You’re talking to a girl who can hack the world’s best encrypted database with only the power of her mind.’

  I turn to look at Machina and her floodlight blinds me. I screw my eyes shut, and a memory is triggered. It hits me like a hammer to the back of my head.

  ‘What happened to you that day, Sam?’ she asks again, but her voice is fading. Her floodlight is so bright, as bright as the sun.

  As bright as the sun that day …

  I am standing on the sports field, tying my shoelace. I can hear the crowd roaring as the two-hundred-metre sprint comes to a tight finish. I squint as I look up at the sun, hot and high. I’ve retreated to the shade to do my stretches, which is as much about keeping cool as it is about avoiding the attention of the crowd.

  ‘Lee!’ I hear the coach calling my name and an avalanche of ice rumbles through my gut. ‘Where are you? Lee!’

  I come jogging out from behind the stands, still stretching my arms.

  ‘Just warming up, Mr Mac.’

  ‘You gotta stop hiding out like that, Lee. I lose track of you. You’re up next.’

  I nod.

  ‘Next is the four hundred metres. All contestants to the starting line,’ the announcer says over the loudspeaker, and I feel every nerve inside me coiling into a tight ball.

  As I walk to the starting line, I can hear Mum and Dad cheering.

  ‘Go, Sam!’ Dad shouts as Mum claps wildly. I try to smile and wave at them but I know it comes out more like a grimace.

  ‘Aw, how sweet. Mummy and Daddy are here,’ says the kid from St Christopher’s who’s been giving me crap all day. ‘Hope they know their son is a loser.’

  ‘We’ll see who the loser is when you’re eating my dust,’ I say.

  ‘Nice comeback, dork,’ he replies as he swaggers to the lane beside me.

  ‘Runners! On your mark!’ shouts the referee, and we all place our feet on our starting blocks, crouching into position.

  ‘Set!’

  BANG!

  I explode off the blocks. I hear the crowd, but only as an afterthought. I press past the other runners, tuning them out. There’s only me and the track. There can’t be anything else.

  The first one hundred metres fly by. I reach two hundred metres, where most people relax before kicking hard on the homestretch. And then I feel the kid from St Christopher’s coming up beside me. I can almost feel him grinning as he starts to pass me, and despite it not being the time to do it, I pick up my speed. The ice in my stomach is replaced by an inferno of determined anger. There’s no way I’m going to let him beat me. There’s no way.

  And that’s when it happens.

  It starts with a strange tingling in my chest. It flows down to my legs and then sparks through my body. The sunlight grows brighter and brighter, illuminating everything in brilliant, burning colour before it shifts and bends.

  And then I’m gone – thrown violently into a tunnel of motion. It’s like I’m in the eye of a hurricane.

  Blood is screaming in my ears as the thought finally catches up to me – What the hell is going on?

  I see blurred objects charge past me faster than race cars. I see faces flashing past, just as confused and scared as I am, but in an instant they’ve come and gone, strobing in and out of reality.

  It feels like … like … like I’ve come unstuck in time somehow, and everything is rapidly evolving around me, shrieking past in a nightmare ride of light and movement.

  The tingling in my body grows stronger, like raw electricity is pouring through my limbs, and as I look down I already know in the back of my mind what I’m going to see.

  I’m still running.

  The shock of it hits my stomach and I feel like I’m going to vomit. How can this be happening? This can’t be real, can it? The sickness lurches through me, pulls at me, slows me down. The effect is like a rocket that’s run out of fuel. I start to fishtail, losing steam, until finally, at the last possible second, I trip and land in a tangled wreck.

  I stare up at the sky, dazed. It doesn’t feel like I should be on Earth any more. It feels like I should be looking up at a red sky with two suns exploding overhead. But instead it’s the same blue as before, the same sun, the same world. I’m here, and I’m me, but I’m not.

  The strange thing is I’m not even tired. I’m not gasping. I’m not sweating. My veins still feel like power cables running electricity instead of blood through my entire core, but other than that I feel completely normal. Normal but … changed.

  I lose track of how long I lie on the ground staring up at the sky until I’m dragged back to reality by a far-off sound that drips its way into my consciousness.

  I pull myself up out of the dirt. I turn. I look.

  I see.

  I see cars overturned and buses with every window shattered. I see holes punched through buildings like bullet wounds, power poles smashed like kindling as their torn wires spark and sputter. I see a city in chaos as it struggles to understand what just happened.

  Worse than all of that, however, is the sound. The sound of people screaming, trapped in their mangled vehicles and pinned under debris. The sound of people’s terror. It floods my ears, making me look away, look down … look at the trail of scorched earth and churned-up asphalt that runs through the city like a scar and ends right at my feet.

  I collapse for a second time, droppin
g to my knees, and I don’t think I’m ever going to get back up.

  ‘Hey, kid! Kid! Are you okay?’ I hear a voice.

  I look up, but the face is obscured by a fierce ray of sunlight that blinds me.

  ‘Sam? Sam?’

  I squint at Machina, blinded by her floodlight. I’m back in the tunnel.

  ‘I’m okay,’ I say, but we can both see how much my hands are shaking.

  ‘I didn’t realise,’ she murmurs. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  I realise I must have been recounting the memory to her as I lived it again.

  ‘You could hear the sirens all over the city,’ I say slowly. ‘There were so many people needing help it was impossible to know where to start. But the people who got the worst of it were the ones in the stands at the sports field. When my powers kicked in I created a sonic boom. But it wasn’t just that. My force-field generated at the same time, which caused a massive shockwave. I may as well have set off a bomb on the track. They tell me my force-field is my body’s way of protecting me from my power. They don’t know what it’s made out of, but they know it’s a biological defence to travelling at such high speeds, otherwise my body would be torn apart by the velocity. When I’m running, I’m indestructible … which doesn’t do the people around me or in my way a lot of good.’

  It’s the first time I’ve spoken about it. I can feel the hot sting of tears building in my eyes. I wipe the back of my hand across my face to keep them away.

  ‘Did you … I mean, did anyone …?’ she starts to ask me. I already know what she’s trying to say.

  ‘Did I kill anyone?’

  She nods.

  ‘Not yet. But there’s over a dozen people still in intensive care. Some are critical.’

  ‘Oh,’ Machina says.

  ‘I broke my own father’s arm,’ I say. ‘Do you know what that means for a concert cellist? The doctors still don’t know for sure if he’ll ever be able to play again. And that’s not the worst of it. The kid from St Christopher’s …’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He … he’s in traction right now. When he gets out … they say he’s going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.’

  ‘Sam, I …’