The New Heroes: Crossfire

by Michael Carroll

  “The answer… is a duck,” Colin said. “All… right. Here’s another… one. A man goes into a… a hardware store and he asks to buy… three hammers… OK? The store guy says… New regulations on the sale of hammers. I can only sell you… two hammers. The man says… fine. He pays the guy, and walks out… with three hammers. But… he didn’t steal anything. How is… that possible?”

  Zeke sighed. “I don’t care. Stop talking.”

  “Come on… Think about it.”

  “No.”

  “Because you’re too… dumb to figure it out.”

  “He already had a hammer with him when he went in.”

  Rats, Colin thought. Didn’t think he’d actually get one of them.

  The door to the room was pushed open, and another of the clones leaned in. “Is he dead?”

  “Hey, Oscar. No,” Zeke said. “And he hasn’t shut up once. Want to swap places?”

  “Nah. Victor says to bring him to the hangar.” The clone came into the room and looked at Colin. “Wow, he’s cold. I suppose we should warm him up first, so he doesn’t break if we drop him.”

  Zeke got to his feet and joined his brother. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “How do you warm someone up?”

  “We could pee on him?” Zeke suggested, and they both laughed.

  Go ahead, Colin thought. Right now I’ll take anything that’s warm.

  Zeke and Oscar reached down and took hold of Colin’s arms, and lifted him up. He’d been sitting in the same position for so long that the blood rushing to his legs brought fresh waves of agony.

  Danny was a little over a mile from his target when he realized that the furrow he was now stepping over was different to the others he’d encountered. Its edges were sharp and straight, and the trough bore a regular hexagonal imprint. Tire track!

  Three yards ahead was an identical track. He looked to the left and right, along the tracks, but couldn’t immediately tell which way to go. To the right, the tracks seemed to go on for half a mile or more. To the left, they stopped after a hundred yards.

  They’re perfectly straight... Who drives from one place to another without making the slightest turn?

  He smiled to himself. Trucks and cars aren’t the only vehicles with wheels, idiot! Has to be the aircraft that Colin was chasing when the clones first showed up.

  So does that mean the plane landed there on the left, and then taxied to the right? Or that it started to take off from somewhere way off on the right and zoomed along this way until it was airborne?

  Either way, it probably means that the base is somewhere on my right.

  He took a few steps in that direction, then stopped. Then again, the left end is a lot nearer. Makes sense to check that first.

  He followed the tracks to the left, and when he reached the end he realized that they stopped abruptly. If the plane was landing or taking off from here, the tracks would get shallower before they disappeared. He turned on the spot, looking for something—anything—that would confirm his suspicions.

  Then he saw it, just in front of a towering outcrop. A line in the ice, no wider than a finger. He followed the line and saw that it curved smoothly around to the right. OK. Interesting. Definitely not a natural phenomenon.

  And then he saw his own boot-prints leading up to the line, and realized he’d come full-circle. He stopped.

  Huh. So the plane lands, taxis to this bit which sinks down like an elevator, like they have on aircraft carriers. How do I get in?

  After a moment, he moved on. Even though he was in fast-time, he couldn’t stay in one spot for too long, or he’d become visible to anyone watching. He followed the circle again, this time staying a few yards outside it. He walked in an increasing spiral, around and around, and was on his tenth lap when something caught his eye: another slight depression in the ice, this one also circular, but only a little over three feet in diameter.

  He crouched next to it and began to scrape away the snow and ice. It wasn’t long before his glove touched metal. It was a disc—a hatchway—and it was sealed tight.

  So that’s one way in… How do I open it? The hatch didn’t seem to have any handles on the outside, or visible hinges.

  Danny knew that his mechanical arm was stronger than the human equivalent, but he doubted it was strong enough to force open the hatch.

  There’s another way, he thought. He lay down flat on his belly, and ran the index finger of his artificial arm in a circle a few inches smaller in diameter than the hatch. He continued this, inscribing the same circle over and over, gradually increasing the pressure.

  From his perspective, the job took hours, and he was glad that the mechanical arm didn’t suffer from muscle fatigue. In real-time, it was taking only seconds—he hoped no one was watching.

  But it was working: eventually the circle became visible as a groove in the metal, which made following the same path much easier. Then the groove began to glow. Red first, then orange, then yellow. When it was glowing white, Danny increased the pressure.

  After a few more circuits, his metal-clad finger—which was by now also glowing—pushed through the hatchway.

  He completed the last circuit and watched with satisfaction as the molten-edged metal disc slowly slipped through into a long vertical shaft. Inside, a steel ladder was bolted to a concrete wall.

  Danny got to his feet and stretched for a moment, before climbing through the hole. At first, he was careful not to brush against the molten-metal edges, but then he realized that it wouldn’t harm his armor.

  His feet found the rungs of the ladder and he began to descend.

  He had to stop every few rungs to wait for the falling disc to drop a little further: the shaft wasn’t wide enough for him to climb down past it.

  He counted as he descended, losing count after two hundred. Man, this is a long way down.

  But finally the metal disc would go no further: it had reached the bottom of the shaft, landing on its edge.

  He watched as, propelled by its great mass, the disc slowly dug its way into the ground, sending a lazy cascade of dust and rock fragments back toward him.

  He stepped off the ladder, and looking left and right he saw that he was in a long, wide tunnel. Though the area around the shaft was made of rough-finished concrete, most of the walls and ground were ice.

  Then he saw the crude sign affixed to the wall nearby. A hand-painted message scrawled on a long strip of cardboard: “Welcome, Daniel Cooper. Please follow the arrows.”

  Chapter 27

  The tunnel walls were covered with hand-painted arrows and signs, all leading Danny into the heart of the glacier.

  This is just creepy, Danny thought. Cross knew I’d be first.

  The signs were crudely made, the handwriting like that of a five-year-old child, and Danny figured they had been made by the clones. He had already passed three of the Colin-look-alikes, frozen in the process of fixing the signs to the walls. One of them had been pushing steel nails directly into the ice walls with his paint-spattered fingers.

  Now, the latest sign read, “Almost there! Around the next corner. But be careful.”

  Danny rounded the corner, and saw Victor Cross sitting in an ordinary chair in the center of a cavernous, mostly-empty room. Cross was wearing a thick padded jacket, gloves, and heavy boots. On the ground next to him was a thermos flask and what looked like a package of sandwiches.

  At the far side of the room, close to the ceiling and suspended from heavy chains, was a black-painted aircraft of a design he didn’t recognize. Above the aircraft was a large metal circular hatch—the same diameter as the circle he’d found in the ice.

  Behind Cross a gray tarpaulin covered something large, and irregularly-shaped.

  Surrounding Cross, embedded into the packed-ice floor, was a circular metal rail, thirty feet in diameter, and outside of it two more of the clones were crouched side-by-side. One was reading a scrap of paper, the other was in the process of crudely painting some words onto a la
rge sheet of cardboard.

  He approached the clones. The one with the paintbrush had so far written, “Danny—the circular rail marks a N”—in fast-time, Danny could see a single drop of black paint seemingly suspended in the air half-way between the paintbrush and the cardboard.

  He leaned closer to the other clone and read the words on the scrap of paper: “Danny—the circular rail marks a Null-field. Remember that?”

  Danny stepped back away from the circle. Remember it? He thought. Yeah, I remember it.

  Two years earlier, in the abandoned Californian gold-mine that Max Dalton had been using as a base, the second power-damper—modeled after Ragnarök’s—had been protected by what Cross had called a null-field.

  Once activated, anything that attempted to pass through the null-field was instantly destroyed. It was an invisible, infinitesimally-thin shell in which nothing could exist. It was the ultimate passive defense mechanism.

  He shifted to real-time, ready to switch back to fast-time if the clones attacked.

  Victor Cross said, “… around the circumference of the rail. And do it neatly this time. You—” He stopped, reacting to the sound of the ruined hatch-cover echoing through the tunnels. “What was that? It… Ah. Don’t bother, boys. Mister Cooper is already here.” He smiled at Danny. “Long time no see. Gosh, I haven’t seen you since, oh, since that time you killed your father.”

  Danny wasn’t going to be drawn into that argument. “A null-field, Cross? Again?”

  “I know. I hate to be repetitive, but it’s the only thing I could think of that I knew would stop you.” Cross leaned over and picked up a small fragment of ice from the ground. He flicked it in Danny’s direction; it disappeared as it hit the invisible null-field. “Just in case you think I’m bluffing.”

  “I got through the last one.”

  “I know. You figured out that if you could see through the null-field, that meant light could pass through. And you actually managed to move faster than light. Not any more, though. A superhuman who loses his powers never quite recovers to full-strength. Would you like to know why that is?”

  “No. If the null-field stops anything but light from passing through, then how come I can hear you? If it blocks the air, then that should block the sound-waves too.”

  Cross smiled. “Good thinking. There are tiny speakers embedded in the rail. So, about your superhuman powers. There is a rare form of energy that—”

  “We know about the missile, Victor. We’re not going to let you do it.”

  “You are.” He reached behind him, grabbed one end of the tarpaulin and lifted it. “Look. It’s your little pals Mina and Colin. Unconscious for the next few hours. You’ll notice that they’ve been wrapped up in Mister Laurie’s sleeping bags to keep them nice and warm. You attempt to interfere with the rocket and I’ll push both of them through the null-field from this side. One at a time, and quite slowly.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Cross let go of the tarpaulin and it dropped back over Mina and Colin’s faces. “Hey, somebody has to destroy the world. Might as well be me.”

  Off to the side, the two clones were shifting their stance. They’re going to attack, Danny thought.

  Then Victor said, “Forget it, boys. He’s too fast for you. Go and meet Danny’s other friends instead. I figure if you follow his path back over the ice, you’ll find them.”

  As the two clones rushed from the hangar, Victor said, “So. Danny. You and I need to talk.”

  “What would we have to talk about?”

  “The future. And the past. But first… Kudos to your new boss McKendrick for being the first person in years to out-think me. I assume he’s watching via the cameras in your armor?” Victor waved and smiled. “Hello, Lance. I’d threaten revenge against your loved ones, but you don’t have any loved ones. Feel free to keep recording and desperately trying to think of a way to defeat me. It won’t do you any good but, hey, it’ll pass the time. Also, we’re blocking any signals you might try to send to your people. Just in case you’re wondering why they don’t respond.”

  Cross looked back at Danny. “Mister Cooper… Do you know what you really are? You’re the lynch-pin, the keystone. You’re the nexus. Everything revolves around you. Like your real father, you are able to control time. You just haven’t had the imagination to do much more than run really fast. Those visions of the future? They’re not visions of what might happen. They’re memories, rippling down through the time-lines. Everything that you have seen will come to pass. I know you’ve been worried, trying to figure out a way to change the future, but that’s not how it works.”

  Cross stood up and stretched. He began to pace back and forth inside the circle. “Sometimes I wish I had your powers instead of mine. It would be nice to be able to fly like Colin or his brothers, or be practically invulnerable like Renata, but your power is the truly fascinating one. You’re the god of time. Many years ago, before either of us were born, some quite clever people called The Helotry of the Fifth King decided that the world would be better off with a single leader, a long-gone superhuman called Krodin. You’ve heard the stories, yes?”

  Danny nodded. “Some of them.”

  “Krodin was, apparently, the first superhuman. Extremely strong, very fast... and gifted with hyper-adaptability. Think of it as an immune system that worked on everything, not just bacteria or viruses. You could shoot him with an arrow, and it would probably penetrate his skin. But only once. The next arrow would find that his skin was suddenly a lot tougher.

  “Despite that adaptability, Krodin seemingly died, thousands of years ago. His followers found a prophecy that they would one day discover a way to bring him back. They worked in secret, gathered their resources, waited patiently for the right time... And then the age of the superhumans appeared. Twenty-five years ago, The Helotry discovered a method to warp time to pull Krodin out of the past. It almost worked, but the time-line is elastic. You can stretch it and twist it, even fold it back on itself, but it wants to return to normal.

  “The Helotry recruited a superhuman called Pyrokine. He could transform matter into energy… But there was so much more to his abilities than that. Like you, he was actually able to bend the physical laws of the universe. The Helotry used him to create a tunnel through time. But Pyrokine betrayed them. As he was dying, he used the last of his energy to blast Krodin back to his own time. At least, he tried. That didn’t quite work.”

  “Brawn told me about this,” Danny said. “Krodin traveled back about six years. There were no superheroes around at that time powerful enough to stop him. He built his own empire.”

  “Right. A diversion from the main time-line. By the time Brawn and his friends were dragged into that reality, Krodin was on the verge of conquering the rest of the world. During those six years he had engaged in many battles, and so his hyper-adaptability had given him a resistance to anything that the would-be heroes could throw at him.”

  “But they still won,” Danny said.

  “They did. They used Krodin’s own teleportation device against him. Of course, he’d already used it himself, and so therefore he was immune to its effects... But one of them realized that the teleporter works by picking an object from its current location and sending it to another. That works on a sub-atomic level. Do you know anything about physics?” Without waiting for Danny to answer, Cross continued: “Let’s just say that every particle contains information on exactly where it is in the universe. It doesn’t, of course, but that’s an easy way to visualize the process. So instead of moving, say, this chair by picking it up and carrying it to its new destination, the teleporter simply rewrites the location values of each particle in the chair. It’s suddenly over there, or wherever you want it to be. Clever, yes?”

  Danny shrugged. I could dig down, create a tunnel under the null-field, pull Mina and Colin to safety before he could even blink.

  But, no, he’ll have thought of that. He’ll have some other way to stop me.


  Unless he’s already guessed I’ll realize that he’s thought of it, and so therefore I won’t do it in case there’s a trap, and then he doesn’t need to have a trap because...

  Danny cut himself off. You could go crazy trying to out-think this guy!

  “So the young heroes realized that if every particle contains information about its physical place in the universe, then that not only means where it is, but when it is. They aimed the teleporter to the exact location and moment that Krodin arrived in the past, six years earlier. At that stage, he had never encountered the effects of the teleporter and therefore it worked on him. That immediately set the time-line back to the way it had been, and most people never noticed. From Krodin’s point of view, he was pulled out of the distant past, appeared briefly in a field somewhere, and then was transported to a rocky, airless desert. Mars.”

  Danny began to slowly walk around the circle. There has to be a weak-spot. And if there’s not, he’s not going to stay in there forever, is he?

  “He’s still alive, of course,” Cross said. “Krodin’s strongest power is his adaptability. He cannot die because his body automatically adjusts itself to compensate for anything it encounters.”

  “And you want him back, is that it?”

  “I did, yes. Krodin was fated to lead the world. Not rule it. Lead it. Without him… We’re a rudderless boat caught in a never-ending storm. The human race had such great potential. We wasted that on petty wars, pointless squabbling over land and material gains. In ten thousand years of recorded history, we have amounted to precisely nothing. Consider that, Danny. People are like children’s building blocks. We can become anything the child imagines, but without a strong leader to build us into something greater, we are nothing but useless pieces of inert material.”

  “So you’re going to destroy all life on the planet just because no one will play with you?”

  Cross sighed. “You are so dense. No, Danny. Because as a race we have failed. We can keep trying to live with the results of our mistakes, and constantly make more mistakes as we go, building temporary solutions that only cause problems for the future… or we can hit the reset button and start again.” He stopped pacing. “In time, the planet will recover, and new forms of life will emerge. It’ll take millions of years, maybe billions, but the Earth will one day be home to another sapient race. Hopefully a better one. But… We don’t have to go down that route. We have an alternative. You can fix everything.”