Absolute Power. Michael Carroll

“Ready?”

      Danny nodded. He pulled his electronic compass from his pocket and examined it. The tiny screen showed his location and the location of the target. “OK.”

      Impervia said, “Take no chances, Danny. If they see you, get out of there ASAP. Do not engage.”

      “Understood. But they won’t see me.” Danny stuffed the compass back in his pocket, raised his night-vision goggles to his face and turned them on. The goggles had been specially modified so that he could put them on and activate them using only his left hand.

      “And keep the scanner going at all times. The target is two kilometres east, but the vegetation is heavy, so keep the noise level down.” Impervia looked at her watch. “Now…go.”

      Danny smiled at Renata, then concentrated. Slipping into slow-time was so simple now it was almost second nature. He pushed his way through the bushes.

      There were times when Danny was almost pleased that he was a superhuman. Times like this, when he knew he was doing something good, almost made up for the loss of his right arm. Almost.

      Since the start of the year, Danny Cooper, Renata Soliz and Butler Redmond had been involved in over a dozen missions like this one, and each one had been successful.

      It’d be a lot easier if Colin was with us, but even so…We’re not doing too badly.

      Danny felt a familiar churning in his stomach. Sometimes, when he thought about the way Colin had left Sakkara, it almost made him ill. He should have stayed, given us a chance to explain everything. Now he’s God-knows-where and his parents are worried sick about him.

      Danny climbed over a rotting, fallen tree and paused to check the compass. Through the night-vision goggles, everything looked green and washed-out. Worse, because he was in his high-speed mode the computer-enhanced images from the goggles flickered maddeningly.

      He glanced behind him and saw that his lightning-fast path through the jungle had shaken the moisture from the undergrowth, marking his trail with a cloud of droplets seemingly suspended in mid-air.

      Danny continued on his way, wondering how long it would take for Mrs Wagner to decide that the trip to the jungle would make a good topic for an essay.

      That was the worst thing about being a teenage superhuman: he still had to go to school. The previous month, Mrs Wagner had given him grief about not turning in his geography homework in time. Danny had tried to argue that he’d been kind of busy saving the world, but the teacher – a former superhuman herself – had simply said, “Danny, you’re the fastest human being alive. You could probably run to Alaska faster than most people could write an essay about it.”

      Life at Sakkara isn’t so bad, Danny told himself. Colin should have stayed with us. Max’s phone-filter thingy means that Yvonne can’t just call us and then use her mind-control, so we’re safe there.

       Well, reasonably safe. But Dioxin’s locked away and Victor Cross seems to have completely disappeared.

      Ahead, Danny could see a point of light. That’s the place. He lowered his goggles and began to run towards it.

      As he ran, a feeling of unease settled over him, like he was being watched. That’s not possible. There’s no way they could know we’re coming. Besides, I’m moving too fast for anyone to see.

      He stepped out into a clearing and saw a squat, vine-covered, crumbling stone building. Two men in grubby overalls were standing near the entrance. Danny walked around the edge of the clearing, counted all the people he could see, then headed back into the jungle, towards his colleagues.

      He could picture the scene: Impervia bossing everyone about, Façade taking no real notice of her and doing his own thing, Renata doing her best to keep as far away from Butler as possible.

      Butler Redmond was definitely a little easier to get along with now, ever since he’d had a panic attack during Dioxin’s attack on Sakkara. Before that, Butler had swaggered about like he owned the place – now he mostly kept to himself, with only the occasional verbal jab at Danny when he was feeling particularly pleased with himself.

      Danny walked out of the jungle a few metres away from the others, and took a moment to look out at the sea. The nearest wave seemed to be frozen in mid-splash. Danny concentrated, shifting back to normal time, and the wave crashed to the shore.

      “You were gone one hundred and twenty-seven seconds,” Impervia said. “Twice as long as you should have been. What happened?”

      “Nothing,” Danny replied. “I took it easy. I might have been in hyper-fast mode, but it’s still two kilometres there and two back.” He pulled the fist-sized scanner from his belt and handed it to her.

      Impervia connected the scanner to the small computer screen built into her uniform’s wrist. “All right…We’ve got twelve hostiles. Four on guard duty, the rest inside the building. Renata, you’re on point. Butler will stick close to you. Vaughan? You stay put and monitor. Give us twenty minutes. If we’re not back—”

      The young soldier said, “I know. Pull out and get back to the transport.”

      “We keep it quiet until we’re on the edge of the clearing, then we take out the guards: make enough noise to bring the others running. When the compound is secure, I’ll set the charges.”

      Renata asked, “Wouldn’t it be easier for one of us to go inside?”

      “Yes, it would. But what happens if the compound is booby-trapped? You three are too important to lose.”

      Danny glanced at Renata, who was looking back at him with a familiar expression, and he knew that they were both thinking the same thing: Impervia wasn’t a superhuman any more, but she still wanted to pretend that she was.

      Façade turned to the other soldier, Vaughan. “Get the extraction team ready to pick up twelve hostiles. And watch our backs.”

      “Yes sir.”

      “Let’s do it. Renata, lead the way.”

      Danny followed Renata into the undergrowth.

      He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go horribly wrong.

       2

      THE NEATLY-DRESSED MAN slowly raised his right hand and showed Colin that he was holding a small device about the size of a mobile phone.

      Colin stepped back, but the man simply smiled and pressed a button on the machine.

      Instantly, the sounds of the farmyard flooded back and Colin jumped: he’d been concentrating so hard on his super-hearing that now the sounds were greatly magnified. He could hear everything: the man and woman’s heartbeats, the noises of the animals – including a tremendous amount of gurgling coming from the cows’ stomachs – birds, insects, the slow ticking of a nearby car’s engine as it cooled down.

      “Sorry,” the man said. “We knew you’d be able to hear us coming from miles away so we had to use this. It’s a sound-muffler. It works by inverting—”

      Colin interrupted him. “I know how it works. What do you want?”

      “We’ve been tracking you for weeks, Colin.”

      “Who?”

      The red-haired woman gave Colin a warm smile. “Look, we know you’re Colin Wagner. Let’s not bother with all that ‘I don’t know who you think I am’, nonsense, OK? It’ll save time.”

      “We just want to talk,” the man said. “I’m Byron, this is Harriet.”

      Colin looked them up and down. Immaculate black suits, white shirts, dark-blue ties. Highly-polished expensive shoes. “You’re