The New Heroes: Crossfire

by Michael Carroll

  Razor stormed up to Lance, and glared at him, face-to-face. “Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Whoa, hey,” Colin said, approaching them. “Come on. We have to work together.” He looked from Razor to Lance and back. They were staring each other down, bearded faces so close their noses were almost touching. “Razor, we need you to…” He frowned for a moment. “Aw, no way.”

  Beside him, Renata asked, “What?” She looked around wildly. “Did you hear something? Is something coming?”

  Lance and Razor broke their staring contest.

  “What is it?” Lance asked.

  Colin looked away. “No, nothing. I just… For a second I thought you were going to thump each other. Look, Razor, you have to stay. We need you. And Lance, you back off. Let him work at his own pace. There’s no one in the world who understands machines like he does.”

  “All right,” Lance said. He turned back to Razor. “Your friend is talking sense. We’ll call a truce, for now.” He held out his hand. “Agreed?”

  Razor stepped back, and turned away. “I’ve got work to do.”

  “Twenty-four hours,” Lance said. “Razor, this is not me just being a jerk for the sake of it. I’m being a jerk because this work is important. You know that. Whatever you need to get it done, it’s yours. Except that you can’t have Colin and Renata at the same time. They have to take shifts watching the prisoners. Speaking of which…” He looked back at Renata. “Your turn. Danny’s been there for hours.”

  “But I’ve been up all night!”

  “So have I. Go on. Colin will relieve you in two hours. He doesn’t need much sleep.”

  As Lance followed Renata out of the room, he said to Colin, “My office, ten minutes.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Colin lifted up the framework for Razor. “Soon as I’m done here.”

  “Steady,” Razor said. “OK. Closer, left. Bit more. Up a tiny bit. Hold it there.” He climbed up onto the bench and spent the next few minutes using a marker to indicate on the framework where the two pieces matched up. “Got it, cool, thanks.”

  Colin said, “Aaaand… He’s gone.”

  Razor looked over toward the doors. “Good.” He jumped down to the floor. “That guy… Drives me crazy. I thought it was bad under Josh, then Impervia, but he’s way worse. Everything has to be done yesterday. You know I still don’t get paid for this?”

  “Who does?”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “Solomon Cord liked him. They were good friends.”

  “Yeah, well. Go on, have your secret meeting with the new boss. Teacher’s pet. Why don’t you bring him an apple?”

  Colin closed the door to Lance’s office and said, “You’re not going to tell him?”

  “Nope. Not yet, anyway.”

  “You should. If it was the other way around, wouldn’t you like to know?”

  Lance said, “Colin, right now we’ve all got more important things to worry about. Ten points for figuring it out, by the way. So far, you’re the only one.”

  “Is that why you’re here?”

  “It’s one of the reasons.” Lance nodded to the chair on the other side of the desk. “Sit, please.” When Colin was sitting, he continued. “OK, so this is how it goes… My parents and my brother were murdered by Slaughter because the old crew and I foiled her plans to bring Krodin out of the past and into the present. Well, it was the present back then, twenty-five years ago. After that, Max took me in for a while, but he and I never did get along. I set out on my own, which was stupid because I was just a kid.”

  “Where did you go?” Colin picked up a pencil and began to twirl it around his fingers.

  “Everywhere. I ended up working with a carnival. Changed my name, lied about my age… All because I wanted to stay hidden from Max. At the carnival I met this girl. She was pretty amazing, but I couldn’t see that at first because… Never mind. Lots of reasons. Anyway, Max found me and dragged me back into his ongoing fight with Casey Duval. I never saw her again. Colin, will you cut that out? It’s distracting.”

  “Sorry.” Colin stopped twirling the pencil. “So when Impervia asked you to…” He stopped. “Hold on a second. How did she even know you? Impervia, I mean.”

  “Oh, she and Max had a little thing going for a while. Secret lovers, and all that. I knew her from back then. Impervia wanted someone she could trust, and who had a knack for lateral thinking. Which is nicely ironic because I don’t really trust her. You know what lateral thinking is?”

  “Remind me,” Colin said.

  “The ability to think around problems. To come up with solutions that aren’t obvious to most people. It’s a handy skill when people try to catch you out with logic problems. Like… OK. Here’s an example. John’s teacher has only five children in her class. Going by age, the youngest is Susan, then there’s Peter, then David, and the fourth is Mary. So is the fifth student, the oldest, a boy or a girl?”

  “There’s no way to tell… Is there a pattern? It goes girl, boy, boy, girl. Susan, Peter, David, Mary. SPDM. Number of letters in their names? Five, five, five and four. That’s not helpful. Oh, wait, they’re the names of people in a famous band or something like that, right?”

  “Nope.”

  Colin frowned. “Wait a second… Just because someone is called, say, David, that doesn’t mean they’re a boy, does it? Names are just labels—they could be applied to anyone no matter what their sex is. So there’s absolutely no way to know.”

  “No, that’s not it. Good thinking, but you’re way off-track. Let’s assume that the names go with the usual genders. David’s a boy, Mary’s a girl, and so on.”

  “Then I give up.”

  Lance reached out and picked up the phone. He entered an extension number and a few seconds later the call was answered. “Razor? Lance. Here’s a puzzle for you…” He repeated the puzzle, then said, “Hold on, I want Colin to hear this.” He put the phone on speaker.

  Razor said, “Well, duh. The oldest is a boy. Why? What’s this about?”

  “Not important. Thanks, kid.” Lance hung up the phone.

  “You gave him the answer earlier?” Colin said.

  “No, I didn’t. He worked it out. Lateral thinking. You have to examine the question, Colin. Consider what I said, not what you think I said. You’ve heard it twice now. How did it start?”

  “The teacher has only five children in her class—”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “All right, John’s teacher has only five… Ah.” Colin grinned. “That’s a good one.”

  “That’s why I’m here. Whatever it is that causes some people to become superhuman is connected to the blue lights. But very few people can see them. In fact, as far as I know, only you, Quantum and Krodin have ever had that skill. What did you see when you cracked open the sphere?”

  “A lot of blue light. It only lasted a second, though.”

  “That’s what I thought. We don’t know where they come from, or what their connection really is to the superhuman abilities. Are the lights the actual energy you use? If so, would it be possible to generate them artificially? Casey Duval probably knew, and I’m guessing that Victor Cross does too. After Danny lost his abilities you saw one of the lights pass right through him, and shortly after that his powers returned. I believe that he burned himself out, you see… He used up all his energy in one go, sent the superhuman part of him into a dormant state. The blue light either recharged him, or just woke up the superhuman part.”

  “Same with Renata, after she froze the world.”

  “Right. She had just enough energy left to restore everything to normal, then—zap!—she’d burnt herself out.”

  “Then why was it different for the two of them? When the light hit Danny, it didn’t seem to have any effect. With Renata, it looked like she was in a lot of pain.”

  Lance shrugged. “Search me. Different people, different powers. But Danny never fully recovered his powers, and I suspect that
Renata won’t either. She’ll never be able to freeze the world again. Might not even be able to freeze other objects. But right now, I’ll take whatever we can get.”

  “So… Do you think that the blue lights are the only cause of the superhuman powers? If an ordinary person gets hit by one of them, will they get powers too?”

  “No. There’s something different about you guys. I think it’s in your DNA. Some people have a genetic peculiarity that makes them susceptible to the blue lights.”

  “But they’ve searched for that, and they’ve never found anything.” Colin realized he was twirling the pencil again, and stopped.

  “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence... Just because you haven’t found something doesn’t mean it’s not there. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s something else entirely. Whatever it is, we know it can be passed from parent to child, but isn’t always. Same with people like Solomon Cord and Razor and me. We’re not superhuman, but we’re not quite human either. And we know that can be inherited genetically, too.”

  “Would the blue lights work on someone who used to be superhuman, like Façade or my parents or Brawn? If you’d sent Brawn out with us, maybe he would have got his powers back.”

  “No, that’s different. I believe Ragnarök’s machine destroyed the thing that makes them superhuman. Now, listen… I have a job for you. It’s not going to be easy, but you’re the only one who can do it.”

  For the next five minutes Lance explained his plan, and when he was done Colin had a tight knot forming in the pit of his stomach. He felt like he was going to throw up. “Lance… I don’t want to do this.”

  Lance gave him a thin smile. “I understand. I’m open to suggestions, but unless you come up with something brilliant, this is the only way to do it. You have to be fully committed to this, Colin. Once we start down that path, there’s no going back.”

  Colin swallowed, and nodded. He’s right, he thought. This is the only way. Aloud, he said, “Lateral thinking, yeah?”

  “Exactly.” Lance picked up his cane and pushed himself out of his chair. “Break’s over. I have to go and shout at people now.” He winked at Colin. “Because he’s your friend, I’ll leave Razor alone for a few hours.”

  “And you’re not going to tell him?”

  “I’ll tell him one day, maybe. But not today. Right now, he hates me, and that hatred is spurring him on to work harder and smarter than ever before. We need that a lot more than he needs to know who his real father is.”

  Chapter 20

  In the grain-silo Renata saw one of the prisoners start to moan and twitch. Into her radio, she said, “They’re waking up!”

  She glanced toward her armor piled up in the corner. Do I have time to put it on?

  The answer came sooner than she’d expected. The clone’s eyes opened, and he jumped to his feet, threw himself against her, slamming her back into the wall, his right fist pulled back, ready to strike.

  Renata shimmered, became crystal just as the clone’s fist cracked into her face.

  She pushed him away as he was staring at his bloodied knuckles, then swung her own fist at him.

  He threw his head back to dodge the punch, then carried the movement through, falling back onto the ground and kicking up with one foot. His boot struck Renata’s arm with enough force to throw her off-balance.

  The clone, now flat on his back, flipped over onto his stomach, facing away from her, and launched himself forward toward the silo’s sealed door. Renata threw herself at him and locked her right arm around his neck, willing it to become solid and immovable.

  Struggling to get free, he raised his legs and kicked out at the door, pushing himself and Renata back into the center of the silo.

  “No you don’t!” Renata said, her teeth clenched. She squeezed tighter on his neck. His left elbow shot back and cracked uselessly against her diamond-hard stomach. She knew she could solidify her entire body and he’d never break her grip, but he’d still be able to fly. He’d just carry her away.

  Can’t let him think of that—have to keep him on the defensive!

  She jabbed her left fist hard into his kidney, and as he squirmed in pain she solidified her entire skull, then lashed her head forward, cracking it against the back of his head.

  He immediately went limp in her arms, and collapsed to the floor as she stepped back.

  A sudden movement behind her—Renata whirled around to see another of the clones darting straight up, crashing through the roof. Shattered bricks cascaded down, and Renata automatically crouched over the unconscious clones to shelter them. What am I doing? They’re the bad guys!

  The once-dark interior of the silo was thick with dust, and Renata covered her mouth as she pushed the fallen bricks off the clones’ unconscious bodies. She was still in her invulnerable crystalline form, but didn’t want to breathe in too much of the dust. It couldn’t harm her, but even though she wasn’t sure how her lungs could possibly work in this form, they did seem to be taking in air. She didn’t like the idea of turning back to normal with her lungs still clogged.

  Danny suddenly appeared next to her—a tunnel in the dust cloud was slowly closing behind him. “What happened?”

  “Two of them woke. One got away.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, but I—”

  “Keep watch on these two. If they start to wake again, grab hold of their wrists and turn yourself solid. That’ll slow them down.” As abruptly as he arrived, Danny vanished, leaving a fresh tunnel in the swirling dust.

  Moments later, a voice on her radio said, “Renata, maintain your position. We’re on the way.”

  “Will do, Steph.”

  She hauled the clones from under the bricks, and carried them out into the farmyard. If I could change them to crystal, the way I used to be able to do, that’d make this a lot easier.

  She put them on the ground and knelt down between them. The one who’d attacked her in the silo looked slightly older than his companion. I think this is the first one, Shadow. We should have put labels on them.

  The older clone’s eyes flickered open, and Renata grabbed his arm. Can’t let this one get away.

  In a weak voice, Shadow said, “H… hh… help me.”

  Renata shifted back, her eyes wide. “What?”

  “He’s controlling us… We don’t want to fight. He makes us do it.”

  “Who are you talking about, Shadow? Who’s behind this?”

  “Ragnarök.”

  Despite being in her crystalline form, Renata shuddered. “No. He’s dead.”

  “Not dead.” Shadow tried to sit up, but Renata put her hand on his chest and pushed him back down. “He’s not dead. Not really. His first body died. Cloned himself, transferred his mind.”

  Renata put her hand to her mouth. “Is that even possible?”

  Then Shadow said, “No.” He lashed out with his right fist, slamming it up into Renata’s jaw. She tumbled through the air and crash heavily back into the curved wall of the grain-silo.

  She jumped to her feet, expecting to see that he had gone, but he was still in the same spot, standing over his clone-brother.

  “You hurt Roman.”

  “So he has a name too. Good. The guy inscribing the gravestones will want to know.”

  “Rule number one,” Shadow said, a slight snarl on his lips. “You keep the enemy off-guard. Of course Ragnarök is dead. He killed himself when he realized he’d lost everything. Those clones were his last chance, and when they were found, he knew that it was all over for him.”

  “What does that mean? His last chance for what?”

  Shadow tilted his head to the side a little as he peered at her. “Your powers have evolved.”

  “I know.” Slowly, Renata walked toward him. She was sure Shadow couldn’t actually hurt her, but he could simply fly away as his companions had done. “What’s rule number two?”

  “Never take on an enemy you can’t defeat.”

  “You think you c
an defeat me? In this form I’m stronger than you, and I’m invulnerable. What do you people hope to accomplish?”

  “We do what the boss tells us. Simple as that.”

  “And who’s your boss?”

  “You know who he is.”

  “Victor Cross.”

  Shadow nodded. “He offered you the chance to join him. You turned him down.” Still watching her, he began to move to the left.

  “Cross is a coward, and a murderer. He’s a power-hungry madman. And you people are his pets. No, worse than that, you’re his puppets.” Renata also moved to her left, the two of them slowly circling around Roman’s unconscious form, then she thought, No, this is what he’s expecting. I have to out-think him.

  “Victor prefers to think of us as his toys.”

  “Toys? And you’re OK with that?” She stopped moving.

  Shadow seemed to hesitate for a moment, then he stopped too. “Sure. Why not? We know who we are, how we were made.”

  “Cloned from Colin’s DNA, grown in an artificial womb. Victor Cross is playing God.”

  “If so, then he’s winning.” Shadow smiled. “You people still have no idea what Victor’s planning, do you?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “Oh, please. Give me more credit than that! But I will tell you this… He is going to win. He’s the smartest person I’ve ever met.” He shrugged. “Well, not that I’ve met many other people. I’m only a few months old. Victor made a lot of improvements to Ragnarök’s cloning technology.”

  “How many of you are there?” Come on, Renata thought, do something! She knew that the longer he talked, the more information she’d be able to get out of him. But useful as that information was, she’d rather he was gone before Stephanie and the others arrived.

  “Nine. I’m the oldest. By two days.”

  Renata deliberately allowed herself to relax. “Hey, do you all have the same powers?” Have to let him think I’ve let my guard down. “Yvonne and Mina don’t, so I guess you guys don’t either.”

  “Ah, Mina…” Shadow’s smile grew. “She is cute. She’s prettier than you.”