Michael Carroll - Absolute Power

For a moment, Paragon was silent. Then he crouched down next to Titan. “It’s not your fault.” He forced a smile. “Damn it, man! Look at you! He had you beaten to a pulp, you’ve got a broken leg, no super-powers, and you still managed to save my life!” He slapped Titan on the shoulder. “It’s not powers that make a hero—”

Titan finished the sentence for him. “It’s courage.”

In the distance, they could hear a helicopter approaching.

“If we can’t get our powers back, then this is the end of the superhumans,” Titan said.

“Hey, I was never a superhuman to begin with.” Paragon grinned. “When you get that leg mended, you come have dinner with me and my wife. She’s always saying she wants to meet the people I work with.”

“You’re married too, huh?”

“Yeah. Five years now. We’ve got twin girls. Cute as buttons and already smarter than their old man. You?”

Titan nodded. “A son. He’s three. Just about.” Titan smiled. “But you already know his mother.” He nodded towards Energy.

“Yeah, I figured that one out a long time ago.”

“Seriously? I thought we were being so careful about it!” Titan held out his hand. “My name’s Warren. Warren Wagner.”

Paragon shook it. “Good to know you, Warren. And I want you to know this …You’ve saved my life before – hell, we’ve all saved each other’s lives dozens of times – but today was different. You ever need anything – anything at all – you come and see me. My name is Solomon Cord.”

COLIN WAGNER SATup suddenly, a gunshot still echoing through his ears. He was on his feet in an instant, looking around wildly for the source of the sound.

His shoulders sagged. Just the dream again …

He rubbed his eyes. Where am I? The smell of dry hay and damp cow manure reached his nostrils. Oh. Right. He remembered sneaking across the farmyard a few hours earlier. Almost overcome with exhaustion, he’d crept into the old wooden barn and climbed up into the hayloft.

Now, spears of sunlight pierced through the cracks and knot-holes in the barn’s wall. Looking at the angle of the beams of light, Colin thought, Sun’s been up for almost an hour and I can’t hear anything moving out there. This has got to be the quietest farm I’ve ever encountered.

Colin sat down again, dangling his bare feet over the edge of the hayloft, and yawned.

The same dream had woken him almost every morning for the four months since he’d left Sakkara; Solomon Cord chained to a chair, Renata Soliz’s family bound and gagged. Victor Cross nearby, talking to Colin on the phone. Telling him that Colin had to choose whether Cord or Renata’s family would die.

And in the dream – as always – Colin chose Cord. Then a man stepped out of the shadows, placed the muzzle of a small handgun against Solomon Cord’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

Colin shuddered. Why do I keep having the same dream over and over? Maybe my brain’s just telling me that I made the wrong choice.

Or maybe it’s because I know I did the right thing. Even though it meant that Sol died, it was still the right thing.

Colin felt his stomach rumble and he tried to remember the last time he’d eaten. Three days ago. The café in Vámospérce. Just before I crossed the border into Romania.

The owner had been at the back of the café as Colin passed, and he offered Colin a sandwich in return for helping him drag the huge, over-flowing bins towards the street.

Good sandwich , Colin said to himself. He glanced down at his bare, unwashed feet. His boots had finally disintegrated over a month before, back in Austria. He didn’t need to wear anything on his feet – his skin was more than tough enough to cope with any environment – but an unwashed, shoe-less thirteen-year-old boy drew attention, and that was the last thing Colin wanted.

I suppose they’re still looking for me. Probably still searching the States. Or maybe they think I went back home.

Maybe I should go back home. See Brian again. God, I wish I’d told him…He must have felt sick every time me and Danny were on the news. His best friends turned out to be the sons of superhumans and we just left him behind.

Colin swallowed. He didn’t want to think about his parents. He wasn’t even sure he ever wanted to see them again.

They betrayed me by bringing Max Dalton to Sakkara. How could they not care that he tried to kill me? Dad always said that …

He shook his head. No. Don’t think about them. Forget them.

When Colin was eight years old, two older boys at school had beaten him up. Colin had taken his revenge by stealing a comic from one and putting it in the other’s schoolbag. The resulting fight had been so ferocious that it took four teachers to pry the bullies apart. Colin had been immensely proud of his act and boasted about it to his parents. Their reaction had not been what he’d expected.

His father had gone ballistic, yelling at Colin, “The ends never justify the means!”

Colin’s mother – who was always much more level-headed than her husband – had taken Colin aside and explained what the problem was. “You stole something. Stealing is wrong. You know that.”

“Yeah, but, see, those two used to gang up on everyone, and now they’re not even allowed to talk to each other in the playground. Maybe I did a bad thing by stealing, but now everyone else is happier ‘cos we don’t have to worry about them two any more.”

“You stole something. Those two boys might be bullies, but you’re a thief. Why is stealing from a bully any better than stealing from a shop?”

“No, but…” Colin’s argument faltered. “See…”

“Colin, you can’t do good by doing bad things.”

Now, as he lay back on the hayloft in a remote farm in northern Romania, Colin Wagner understood exactly what his parents had been talking about.

Yeah, adults are great at laying down the rules, but they’re not always so good at sticking to them. Working with Max Dalton is wrong. I don’t care if he’s the only ex-superhuman with any knowledge of how mind-control works. Max risked my life and the lives of tens of thousands of innocent people when he tried to use that machine. I know he thought he was doing the right thing, but that’s no excuse.

Almost fifteen years earlier, on the day Colin’s best friend Danny Cooper was born, Danny’s father – the hyper-fast superhuman known as Quantum – had received a vision of the future. In that vision, Quantum had seen Danny as a young man leading an army of superhumans against the ordinary people. Billions of people would die in the war.

Max Dalton knew Quantum well enough to realise that the future he’d seen had to be prevented. Max had used his mind-control on Quantum, forcing him to work alongside the villain Ragnarök to create a machine capable of stripping all the superhumans of their powers.

It had worked. For ten years, there had been no superhumans. And then Danny and Colin – the son of Energy and Titan – reached puberty, and their own powers began to appear.

If only Dad hadn’t destroyed Ragnarök’s machine just after it was used…Then none of us would have powers. We’d all still be living at home and we’d probably never have learned the truth about what happened to the superhumans.

Once Max had learned that Danny’s powers were appearing, he’d attempted to build a second power-damping machine. But without Ragnarök’s understanding of how the powers worked, the machine was flawed. It would have killed Colin and Danny and thousands of other people.