Absolute Power. Michael Carroll

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.

      We had to stop it, Colin thought. Even if that means that the war might still happen…You can’t sacrifice innocent people just because one half-mad superhuman had a vision of the future.

      Colin sat up and looked around the barn. The shafts of sunlight were at a slightly steeper angle now. Better get out of here before the farmer comes to milk his cows.

      He froze.

      Something’s wrong. A farm is never this quiet.

      Colin pushed himself off the edge of the hayloft, dropped the four metres to the ground and landed silently. My God! I’ve gone deaf! But…He shook his head. This didn’t seem possible. Before he’d fallen asleep, he’d been able to hear the old farmer snoring in the farmhouse a hundred metres away. Now, there was nothing.

      Then Colin turned around and saw the well-dressed man and woman standing right behind him.

      Fifteen thousand kilometres to the west a large, sleek, black aircraft descended quickly and almost silently from the night sky, its six turbine engines blowing a large crater in the narrow, moon-lit strip of sand that separated the island’s dense jungle from the Pacific Ocean.

      Danny Cooper couldn’t help but admire the skill with which Renata Soliz handled the new StratoTruck’s controls; the craft touched down with barely a bump.

      The others were already out of the craft and running across the beach by the time Danny had managed to unclip his seatbelt.

      This was the furthest Danny had ever been from home: Isla del Tonatiuh was situated five hundred kilometres to the south-west of El Salvador. The island was less than thirty kilometres across and was covered in a thick canopy of vegetation: the perfect place for an international arms-smuggling operation.

      Danny silently made his way to the undergrowth, where the five others were waiting for him.

      Renata Soliz leaned close and whispered, “How is it that someone who can run as fast as you is always the last one out of the StratoTruck?”

      Danny grinned. “It would be a lot easier if whoever designed the seatbelts didn’t assume that everyone has two hands.”

      “All