The New Heroes: Crossfire

by Michael Carroll

  “Smart,” Alia said. “But those films always have a little digital clock in the corner, right? So that’s going to change every second. They’ll have to mask out those bits.”

  “Yeah, Kenya already thought of that.” Danny sipped from his water. “Plans have changed, Alia. The Big Fish is coming back in a few hours—we’re going to leave you and Grant behind to continue the search. The rest of us are going back to Sakkara.”

  “But what can you do there? I mean, I want to go back but Mina disappeared from here. And there’s no point searching for the guy who killed Butler. If Colin couldn’t find him, we’re not going to be any use.”

  “Impervia’s working with this new guy to coordinate everything. Lance McKendrick. He’s supposed to be some sort of genius.”

  Alia made a face. “Well, great. Working with geniuses has turned out real well so far, hasn’t it? Victor Cross and Yvonne come to mind.”

  “This guy Lance is different. He’s supposed to have a way with people.” Danny shrugged. “I dunno. Warren trusts him, that’s good enough for me. And he’s got a plan, but they’re not saying what it is.”

  Cassandra wasn’t comfortable being alone with Stephanie Cord in the helicopter. She had been twelve years old when her ability to read minds developed, and in the four years since, she had become accustomed to casually scanning people’s minds when she spoke to them.

  She was aware that it was an intrusion into their privacy, but she couldn’t stop herself. Besides, it saved time.

  It didn’t work perfectly with Stephanie—better than with many people, but not as well as she’d have liked. She could pick up some surface thoughts and emotions, enough to know that Stephanie didn’t fully trust her.

  Cassandra understood that: Stephanie’s previous encounters with telepaths had not been positive.

  She watched as Stephanie expertly manipulated the controls. “I still can’t believe they let you fly this thing on your own.”

  Stephanie smiled. “Me either.”

  The copter was a reconditioned Alouette II, fast and small, and Stephanie handled it with ease, but Cassandra felt exposed inside the almost completely transparent canopy. Stephanie had assured her that it was bullet-proof, but Cassandra would have preferred a more solid-looking craft. This one looked like it had been built by someone who had heard of helicopters but never actually seen one.

  Before they left Sakkara, Impervia had told Cassandra that when this was over she’d be given some time off. “A couple of weeks. You can stay with your mom in the Substation. How’s that sound?”

  “The Substation” was the name given to the large underground complex in which many of the former prisoners from Lieberstan were housed. Situated in the heart of Idaho, it had been designed as a particle accelerator but abandoned part-way to completion when the funding ran out. After the Trutopian war the US Government had purchased it and converted it into spacious living apartments. Cassandra liked the place a lot. It was practically a small city, albeit one with only a single circular street, and being underground meant that it was sheltered from the elements.

  She had lived her entire life under the dome of the prison in Lieberstan, so not being able to see the sky didn’t bother Cassandra, and she loved the fact that her mother liked the place. She had never seen her mother happy before.

  Most of the inhabitants of the Substation seemed to enjoy their new lives. They were free to come and go as they pleased, each family had its own apartment, and there was always plenty of food. The government agent who oversaw the project—a short woman with gray hair and glasses, who always seemed to be wearing the same business suit—had told them that at some point in the future they would be expected to work for their accommodation, but right now everything was free, in return for a few favors.

  The first favor had been for Cassandra’s mother to allow her to join the New Heroes. Cassandra wasn’t sure how she felt about that: she was now effectively supporting the whole community.

  In the copter’s cockpit beside her, Stephanie nudged Cassandra’s arm. “Three minutes. You OK?”

  Cassandra nodded.

  There were advantages to working with the New Heroes, and chief among these was Razor. She liked him a lot, and she knew that he liked her. But he was four years older than her so he still thought of her as a kid.

  Butler had liked her, too, but that hadn’t been mutual. She’d been able to tolerate him because she’d always known what he was going to say, but he’d been too wrapped up in his own problems to allow himself to get close to the others.

  And now he’s dead, she thought. What bothered her most about his death was that it didn’t really bother her that much: in the platinum mine sudden deaths had been quite common. Cassandra feared that she had become immune to death.

  She wondered if she should tell the others what Butler had really thought of them, about how proud he’d felt to be working with them. How he had admired and respected them, and desperately wanted them to accept him. But he had always found himself saying the wrong thing, making comments that in his head had seemed clever and funny, but when they came out they sounded cruel.

  She could tell them how Butler often despised himself for his selfishness, and how he had been overwhelmed with his jealousy of Razor, who had come from a broken home, had practically no education, no superhuman abilities, had been a borderline criminal, and yet the others loved him.

  Colin and Danny’s relationships with their fathers had been what hurt Butler the most. Cassandra knew that Butler’s father had loved him, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Butler had never learned how to return that love. He’d fought his father on almost everything, frequently fighting just because he didn’t know any other way to behave.

  And now he’s dead, she thought again. He’s never going to have a chance to grow up.

  Ahead, Cassandra saw that they were approaching a large complex of stone-walled buildings completely surrounding an open courtyard. The buildings’ roofs were flat, their edges rimmed with dense layers of razor-wire. A dozen large, automatic weapons had swiveled around to target the copter.

  Into her radio, Stephanie said, “Base 228, this is kilo-niner coming in to nest. Clearance code zulu x-ray eight-zero.”

  The radio clicked into life. “Code acknowledged and verified, kilo-niner. Set down between the beacons and shut off your engines. Your transport will be secured when you disembark.”

  “What’s that mean?” Cassandra asked.

  Stephanie said, “They’re going to attach really strong cables to the copter when we get out. Just in case something happens and some of the prisoners try to use it to escape.”

  The auto-guns continued to track the copter as it came in to land, and Cassandra looked around to see that every window facing the courtyard was occupied by two or more armed guards.

  The copter set down with a slight bump in the middle of the courtyard, and Cassandra unclipped her seat harness as Stephanie shut everything down.

  “All right,” Stephanie said. “Here’s the deal. There’s a very specific prisoner in this place and you’re the only one who can help. You probably won’t see any of the others, but if you do, don’t talk to them, and—if you can help it—don’t scan the minds of the guards.” She unclipped her own harness. “But you probably won’t be able to prevent that, so I have to warn you that whatever you learn here has to stay secret, understood?”

  Cassandra nodded. “OK.”

  “This place is home to some of the country’s most dangerous criminals. Serial killers, rapists, terrorists, arsonists, poisoners… The very worst of the worst. Cassandra, you really don’t want to see into their minds. So focus on the task, do only what I tell you, and you should be all right.”

  They climbed out of the copter to see a man wearing a doctor’s coat approaching them. From the sides, four uniformed guards were dragging thick steel cables toward the copter.

  “Miss Cord, always a pleasure.”

  As Stephanie sho
ok his hand, Platt peered past her toward the copter. “Huh. When did you get your pilot’s license?”

  “I won’t tell if you don’t. Cassandra, this is Doctor Carter Platt. He’s in charge here.”

  Platt smiled. “Well, I keep the place running, but I hardly think I’m in charge.” He inclined his head back the way he had come. “I’m assuming that time, like always, is short.”

  As they strode toward the doorway, Doctor Platt said to Cassandra, “Welcome to The Cloister. A little place where we keep the bad guys away from everyone else. So you’re a telepath? Excellent. You’re one of a very small number. There’s been a good number of empaths, of course, but genuine telepathy is rare.” He held the door open for them. “A gift to be savored.”

  The inside of the prison was dark and damp. Cassandra saw Stephanie wrinkle her nose at the sharp stink of urine mixed with the cloying odor of mold, but the smell didn’t bother Cassandra. She’d grown up in worse conditions than this.

  They walked along the door-lined corridor and Doctor Platt put his hand on Cassandra’s shoulder. “I’m sure Ms Cord here has already mentioned this, but—”

  Cassandra said, “She did. I’m doing my best.”

  The thoughts around her, emanating from unseen prisoners behind the steel doors, seemed to be pressing against her mind. It reminded her of a horror movie they had watched in Sakkara a few months earlier. There was a scene in which the heroes were trapped in a bar as hundreds of zombies crowded around the doors and windows, desperate to find a way in.

  The prisoners’ minds were sharp and cold, venomous and barbed. She forced herself to block them out, to hold back the terrifying images and sounds.

  As they passed a cell close to the end of the corridor, Cassandra stopped. “Wait!”

  Stephanie and the doctor turned back to her. “What is it?” Platt asked.

  She pointed to the cell door. “The man in there. He’s innocent.”

  “You can read his mind even through the cell door?”

  “Yes. He didn’t do it. He was arrested for murder. Lots of murders. But he didn’t do any of them! You have to let him go.”

  Platt gave her a wan smile. “I’m sorry, but you’re wrong. He murdered fourteen people that we know of. Probably a lot more.”

  “No, he didn’t! It was a set-up!”

  “He thinks it was a set-up. He’s insane, Cassandra.”

  “Then he should be in a hospital!”

  “He was. That’s where he murdered his three most recent victims. We have security film of him doing it. You don’t want to see that. At first we thought that he had multiple personalities, but eventually we realized it wasn’t that simple. He modifies his own memory. He can commit the most brutal of crimes and then erase his memories of them and replace them with memories of innocent activities. Trust me. This is not an ordinary prison where sometimes innocent people are convicted. Everyone here is absolutely, indisputably guilty.” His voice a little softer, he added, “This is not like the prison in Lieberstan. I promise you.”

  She looked into Doctor Platt’s own mind then, and saw that he was telling the truth. Or he believes it to be true, at least, she thought. Then she touched on his memories of the prisoners, and pulled out as images of horrible crimes they’d committed came rushing at her. “OK.” She took a deep breath and held it for a second. “OK. I’m sorry.”

  “No need to be sorry,” Stephanie said. “Come on. We’ll get this over with.”

  Cassandra took a last glance back at the cell door, then resumed following the doctor and Stephanie.

  She forced her mind closed to all other thoughts until they stopped outside a heavy steel door that was at the end of a corridor all on its own.

  Doctor Platt said, “The prisoner is extremely strong, and unbelievably dangerous. Behind the door there’s a wall of transparent aluminum, eighteen inches thick, so you’ll be safe. If anything does happen, the cell will be instantly flooded with enough halothane vapor to knock out an elephant. Ready?”

  Cassandra already knew what she was going to find: the doctor’s mind was now broadcasting it so loud that she couldn’t block it if she tried.

  Platt turned a large key in the door’s lock, and grunted as he pulled the door open. Inside, behind the glass, a thin, pale, black-haired girl with dark-rimmed eyes was sitting on a bed, surrounded by plain white walls. She raised her head, and Cassandra saw that the girls’ throat was covered in a mass of white and red scars.

  “This is Yvonne Duval,” Stephanie said. “I know you’ve heard of her.”

  Cassandra swallowed. Yvonne was Mina’s sister, cloned by Ragnarök from his own DNA. She had grown up in Sakkara, where she discovered that she had the ability to control other people by simply telling them what to do.

  Yvonne had sided with Victor Cross, helped him to infiltrate Sakkara, then fled with Solomon Cord as her prisoner. After Cross died—or supposedly died: people seemed to be less certain about that now than they had been a year ago—Yvonne had taken control of the entire Trutopian organization. In a live television broadcast watched by almost every Trutopian she used her power to order them to fight and kill everyone who wasn’t a member of their organization. Because of Yvonne’s actions, hundreds of thousands of people had died.

  When she’d been captured by Stephanie Cord and Renata Soliz, Yvonne had been forced to make further broadcasts ordering the Trutopians to stand down. Then an unknown assassin had tried to kill her. The shot had torn through Yvonne’s throat. She would never be able to speak again. Never be able to use her powers to force others to obey her commands.

  Doctor Platt said, “Yvonne, this is Cassandra Szalkowska. You two need to have a little chat.”

  Yvonne looked at the doctor with one eyebrow raised, as if to say, “How?”

  Stephanie said, “Go ahead, Cassandra. Tell her everything.”

  Cassandra looked at Yvonne, and projected her thoughts. Your sister has gone missing. She was in Berlin, working with Danny Cooper and Warren Wagner. Helping to clear up the damage your war caused.

  Yvonne’s thoughts came back: “You’re a telepath. And you think that means we’ll be able to communicate but I won’t be able to control you.”

  I know your power worked through your voice, and you no longer have one. And I think we both know that if it looks like you can control me, the guards here would put a bullet in my brain before they let you force me to do anything.

  Yvonne thought, “If they have questions, they could just give me a pencil and some paper. I can still write.”

  But you can write lies. You can’t lie to me.

  Yvonne shrugged. “True. So my sister’s missing. I assume there’s no trace of her, otherwise you wouldn’t be desperate enough to come to me. How do you think I can help?”

  You know her better than anyone. How could she have disappeared? She can only teleport a few miles at a time. Cassandra told Yvonne everything she knew about Mina’s disappearance, and when she was done, Yvonne smiled and nodded.

  “Seems to me that she didn’t just vanish. And she’s too smart to be taken by surprise. She was led away. Someone persuaded her to go with them. They fooled her at least long enough for them to disable her powers in some way. Which means that she’s unconscious, because if she was awake she could teleport herself out of danger. So it’s likely that whoever took her doesn’t want her for her powers. They want her for something else. Or they just want her out of the way because they’re planning something else and they really don’t want to have to deal with a teleporter.”

  That makes sense, Cassandra thought. If we can work out how they got her, we’ll be further along the road to finding where she is.

  “I’m sure your people have already thought of this, but I’ll say it anyway. Get a map. Draw a line between Berlin and the point where Mina’s cellphone was recovered, then extend the line and see where it leads you. Their destination was somewhere along that path. Though you have to take into account that they’d be avoiding mi
litary installations and high-density population centers.”

  Cassandra nodded. They’ve done that. It didn’t help.

  “All right. If you plan to lead someone into a trap, it has to be baited with something they want. What did Mina want most?”

  You tell me: you knew her best.

  “It’s tempting to think that what she wanted most was for me to return to her, but I doubt that. She had a major crush on Danny Cooper.” Yvonne smiled again. “But I don’t see how that helps. If someone disguised himself as Danny, it wouldn’t fool Mina. Even the greatest shape-shifter in the world wouldn’t know how to make his aura look like someone else’s.”

  Cassandra thought, Look, there’s something else. Victor Cross. What if…

  “What if he’s not dead? That thought has occurred to me. I was speaking to him on the phone when his plane was attacked. I heard the missiles strike. If he’s not dead, then it means he deliberately betrayed me. He set me up. It means he knew exactly how I would react when I believed he was dead. And that means he wanted me to trigger the war.”

  Isn’t that possible?

  “Yes. It is. Cross is smarter than I am. And it could be true. I don’t want it to be true, but only a fool would ignore a possibility just because she doesn’t like it. If Cross did set me up, then we have to assume that everything that’s happened since is part of his plan.”

  Do you know what that plan was?

  “I thought I did. He wanted to control the world. He used to say that if the humans had spent their time and resources working together instead of fighting each other they’d have colonized a good portion of the galaxy by now.” Yvonne shrugged. “I don’t know if there’s any truth to that. War drives technology forward. If we don’t have enemies, there’s no impetus for us to find better ways to kill them.” She shook her head. “No, Victor must be dead. I was his strongest ally—I can’t imagine any plan he might have had that would make sacrificing me the right thing to do.”

  What was that you just said about fools ignoring possibilities?