“You know why,” the Raptor said. Slowly, he climbed to his feet, swaying a bit as he stood. “I’m dying, and the city needs someone to protect her.”
Lucas shook his head. “That’s not good enough. That’s not good enough to justify murder.”
His father lifted a gloved hand to his damaged face. The entire right side had started to blacken and swell. “It wasn’t murder,” he said. “They just failed to pass the test I presented them with.”
“Test?” Lucas shrieked, stomping forward and pushing his father.
The man staggered back but did not attack.
“Yes, a test,” the Raptor explained. “I hoped that at least one of my children would be strong enough to carry on my legacy. But to do that, they had to be tested.”
Lucas felt as though he was suffocating. He ripped the mask from his face.
“So what was my test?” he asked, already knowing the answer, but hoping—praying—it wasn’t true. He threw his mask to the rubble-strewn ground. “It wasn’t the Science Club, was it?”
Hartwell nodded. “Oh, it was. … They were most definitely responsible for the attack on your home, and for the death of your mother.”
Lucas couldn’t help himself, lashing out again at the old man and knocking him to the ground.
“You told them where I lived … where to find me. Their attack—their attack was my test.”
Hartwell slowly nodded, thick black blood oozing from his swollen lips. “Yes,” he said simply. “I was hoping you’d never have to know about that. You survived everything I tossed at you that day. The men I hired to attack the trailer park had strict orders to kill you if they could, but you survived, son.”
He paused, staring intently. “You passed the test.”
The words echoed through Lucas’s mind, reverberating over and over, but still he could not believe them.
“You killed my mother … to test me?”
“You refused my other offers,” the Raptor explained. “What did you expect me to do? You didn’t realize how important this was to the city. I had to give you an incentive…. I had to show you the depths of the evil that is out there … show you why somebody like me”—he paused and pointed to Lucas—“somebody like you is needed.”
From the mask on the ground came the sound of Putnam’s voice. “Lucas? Are you all right? Are you there?”
But Lucas wasn’t hearing anything other than the roar of blood in his ears.
“My mother died so you could get me to do what you wanted,” Lucas said through gritted teeth, reaching down to grab his father by the armored shoulders.
The Raptor struggled weakly, but Lucas could tell that the fight had gone out of him.
“You had her killed to show me about evil?” Lucas screamed, shaking him. “I could have learned all I need to know about evil just by looking in your eyes!”
The rage had gotten the better of him. He didn’t even realize what he was going to do until he was doing it. Straining the servomotors of his exoskeleton, he picked his father up and tossed him toward the Mustang parked in front of the hospital.
The Raptor hit the car with the force of a freight train, windshield and windows exploding in a shower of glass as the vehicle bent around the armored man.
Lucas took deep breaths, trying to calm himself. He stared at the still shape of his father, caught within the twisted embrace of the vehicle, and oddly enough, he began to fear he might have killed him.
That he too might have crossed that terrible line.
The Raptor stirred with a grunt, and Lucas breathed a small sigh of relief.
“You realize I’ll need to deduct the cost of the Mustang from your allowance,” the Raptor quipped.
The metal of the car screeched and groaned as his father tried to extricate himself from the vehicle’s twisted hold.
Too late, Lucas noticed the puddle that had started to form beneath the ruptured gas tank. As the Raptor moved, light flashed and sparks sprayed from beneath his damaged chest plate, and suddenly the gasoline ignited into a sea of fire.
“No!” Lucas screamed, bounding across the courtyard toward the growing conflagration.
But a tiny voice inside his head told him to let the man burn.
A voice that sounded an awful lot like his father’s.
* * *
Lucas darted into the flames, his eyes scanning the blackened, twisted metal for a sign of his fallen father. The air had become superheated, searing his lungs and scorching the exposed flesh of his face.
He found the man lying on his stomach. He’d managed to free himself but was now surrounded by burning puddles of gasoline.
Shielding his face, Lucas jumped over the burning lakes of gas and knelt beside his father, carefully turning him over. The Raptor’s face was burned, but his body appeared to have been protected by his armor.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” Lucas said, preparing to lift the man into his arms.
“No,” the Raptor protested, suddenly conscious.
Lucas leaned back, staring in confusion.
“Let me die,” the Raptor said, waving the boy away.
“Is that what you would do?” Lucas asked coldly.
The Raptor stared with one eye, the other swollen shut. “The strong survive and the weak—”
“Shut the hell up,” Lucas said, and yanked him up from the ground. He hung his father’s arms over his shoulders and tensed the muscles in his legs, praying that the Talon exoskeleton had enough juice left to carry both of them.
Lucas leapt, the powerful jump taking him over the lake of fire to the courtyard beyond. He touched down in a crouch and let his father slide from his grasp to the ground.
The Raptor lay there, his body wracked by powerful coughs.
“Do you need to go to the hospital?” Lucas asked, kneeling beside him again.
The man shook his head. “Must finish … must finish the test,” he gasped.
Lucas didn’t understand. “Finish the test?” he asked, grabbing hold of his father’s arm in a steely grip. “What are you talking about?”
Putnam and Katie had come from the building, and he looked to them for possible answers. But they seemed to be as much in the dark as he was.
“Should have let me die,” the Raptor whispered. “It would have been over then.”
The man rolled over onto his side, his fingers probing at a band around his wrist.
“Watch him,” Putnam warned.
Lucas reached out and grabbed his father’s arm, but not before he had managed to punch a numbered code into a small keypad.
“What have you done?”
“You’re still not quite ready,” the Raptor said. “Mercy lives in your heart.” He shook his head sadly. “For this city to survive, you must have none.”
The mechanism around his wrist began to emit a series of blips and beeps.
“What did you do?” Lucas demanded again, squeezing his father’s wrist so tightly that the metal of the man’s gauntlet began to bend.
The Raptor winced in pain but did not try to pull away. “I’ve begun the final test,” he said. “To show you what happens in these new and terrible times when you show your enemies compassion.”
Lucas felt a chill go down his spine. If this man could kill his own children to achieve his twisted goals, what else was he capable of?
“Tell me!” he shrieked, yanking the man up from the ground and shaking him.
“I’ve activated a small-yield nuclear device,” the man said sleepily, fighting to keep his eyes from shutting.
“Oh my God,” Katie gasped.
Lucas shook him again. “Stay awake!” he commanded. “Why would you do this?” He was getting tired of asking the madman the same question over and over again. Why? Why? Why?
The Raptor smiled, his teeth stained pink with blood. “You had your chance, boy,” he said, and started to laugh. “It could have all been over if you’d let me die. Now you still have something to prove. Show me yo
u’ve got what it takes to keep her safe. It’s out there someplace … hidden in the Angel City, and will detonate in …”
He thought for a moment, the unswollen eye beginning to close.
“Less than thirty minutes … unless you can stop it.”
Lucas dropped his father’s body to the ground and turned to the others.
“What are we gonna do?” he asked, panic on the rise.
They were all silent, but a look of steely determination came over Putnam’s face.
“We’re going to stop it,” Putnam said. “Or die trying.”
Lucas was retrieving his face mask when the new sounds began.
“What now?” he asked, exasperated, turning to see Katie and Putnam stepping back as his father’s body began to rise from the ground on twin jets of fire.
“Must be some kind of escape command,” Putnam said, shielding his eyes as he watched the Raptor arc into the sky. “Must’ve been activated once the final test was started.”
“The jerk is probably being flown to safety,” Katie said with a snarl.
“I’ll go after him,” Lucas said, slipping on his mask and preparing to activate his own flight capabilities.
“There’s no time,” Putnam said. “If we’re going to save Seraph City, you’re going to need to get there pretty damn fast.”
“This is pointless. Once I get there, what do I do?” he asked, frustrated. “I haven’t any idea where he could have hidden a bomb.”
“So, what, then?” Katie spoke up. “We’re just going to stand here and wait for it to detonate? I don’t think so.”
“But—” Lucas began.
“Get into the air,” Putnam said, awkwardly turning and heading back to the abandoned hospital with Katie’s help. “I’ll man the command center and use some of the diagnostic instruments built into the suit. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Lucas watched them go, pretty sure he’d never felt quite so useless in his life.
Katie turned to look at him. “What are you waiting for?” she asked, gesturing wildly toward the sky. “Go … fly!”
He activated his boot jets and rocketed into the sky in the direction of Seraph City. He was thinking about all the people who lived there, going about their day-to-day existences, never realizing the fate that was so close to befalling them.
Putnam was right. He had to do something, anything, to keep his father’s plan from being carried out.
It wasn’t long before he was over the city, and a crackling in his ears told him Putnam was checking in.
“I’m over the capitol building right now,” Lucas said. “Any chance this might be the place?”
“Too political,” Putnam said. “He’s trying to make a statement about weakness … about the consequences of weakness.”
Lucas angled away from the golden dome of the capitol and flew toward the financial district. Using the magnifiers built into the eyepieces of his face mask, he scanned the crowds milling about the streets below.
“I’m over downtown. If he wanted to cause the most casualties, this would be the place,” Lucas informed his copilot.
“It’s a possibility,” Putnam said. “But I still don’t see it relating to his point.”
“Aren’t there any instruments built into this suit that might help locate this thing?” Lucas asked. “It is a nuclear bomb, right? Maybe there’s radiation leaking from it or something?”
“I’ve got all the scanners running, but so far there’s nothing. He’s probably got this bad boy shielded up pretty good just for that reason. Remember, this is a test. He wants us to be able to figure this out, but he isn’t going to make it easy. The clues are there; we just have to pull them all together.”
Lucas zoomed by the window of St. Sebastian’s Hospital. A small child was sitting in a wheelchair by the window, and he caught the excited expression on her face as she spotted him.
That was what it was all about, the whole hero thing, and why he couldn’t let them—the citizens of Seraph City—down.
It was what his father had been trying to show him in his own, twisted way—the hope that heroes brought to others. The responsibility they had to protect the weak.
When did it all go wrong for him? Lucas wondered. When did the message become so distorted?
And then he recalled something Putnam had said. Something Lucas had found incredibly sad.
It was about the trap set by the Terribles.
“It was as if what had happened changed all the rules for him, turning him into a completely different person,” Putnam had said. “It was as if he’d been turned into some kind of cold, calculating machine.”
And suddenly it clicked. Lucas stopped flying as he tried 191 to gather his thoughts.
“What’s going on, Lucas?” Putnam asked. “Is everything all right? Should I run a diagnostic?”
“Shut up a minute, would you?” the boy said. “I’m trying to think.”
“Well, think fast, because we’ve got less than twelve minutes to go before Seraph City is swallowed up by a mushroom cloud.”
“When did it all change for him?” Lucas asked, his boot jets blazing, holding him steady in the air.
“Who, Hartwell?” Putnam asked.
“He wasn’t always this way,” Lucas continued. “What changed him?”
“After the business with the Terribles … after their trap was sprung and all those people who depended on him to protect them died.”
“Right,” Lucas said.
“Are we going someplace with this?” Putnam questioned.
Lucas continued to hover, trying to follow the thread of his thoughts. “He told me that on that day, he felt he had died—that everything that made him human was taken away in the flash and roar of an explosion.”
And then Lucas knew.
“The memorial,” Lucas said.
“The memorial …,” Putnam began. “Oh, crap, you might be right.”
Lucas started to angle his body toward the memorial where the old convention center had once stood. He heard the growl of an engine and the hiss of spinning rotor blades, and a police helicopter was suddenly in front of him.
An officer was leaning out of the passenger seat, a bullhorn at his lips. “Drop to the street immediately. If you do not comply, we will …”
“Is that the police?” Putnam asked.
“Yeah,” Lucas replied.
“Well, get the hell out of there. You don’t have time for their nonsense,” the older man ordered.
Lucas did as he was told, giving the cop a little wave as he spun himself away and took off with a blast of his rockets.
“Hartwell really seemed put off by the statue,” Lucas recalled. “Said it was a memorial to his failure.”
He flew above the building zone, activating the retrorockets in his boots to begin his descent. Landing, he ran to-ward the small plaza where the monument stood.
“All right, I’m here,” he said, looking around, trying to keep his growing panic at bay.
Construction workers from the nearby sites had seen him land and were slowly making their way toward him.
“Oh, crap, I’m getting an audience,” Lucas said as the workers approached.
“Ignore them. We haven’t much time,” Putnam said. “Check out the statue. Look for signs that it might have been tampered with.”
Lucas walked around the statue, carefully examining it.
“Hey,” he heard one of the workers yell. “You supposed to be Talon or something?”
“Please step back,” Lucas said, trying to keep his voice authoritative.
“What’s going on?” another asked. “Something wrong with the statue?”
Lucas ignored the question, turning on the magnifiers in the lenses of his mask.
“Anything?” Putnam asked.
“Nothing,” Lucas answered, his hopes starting to wane. “How much longer?”
“Five minutes.”
“Hey, superhero guy!” another of the construction guys c
alled out. “I told them to be extra careful when they were moving it last week, so it’s the city’s fault if they’ve fouled it up somehow.”
Little bells went off inside Lucas’s head. “The city moved the statue?” he asked.
The worker nodded. “Yeah, they wanted to make the base more secure or somethin’.”
“Did you hear that?” Lucas asked Putnam as he knelt down near the base.
“Like music to my ears,” Putnam replied. “What do you see?”
“Looks like fresh concrete around the base,” Lucas answered.
“You realize you’re going to have to move it,” Putnam said.
Lucas had figured as much. He glanced quickly at his audience. There wasn’t any time for subtlety. Exerting his full strength, enhanced by the exoskeleton, Lucas pushed on the statue with all his might.
Bolts popped and concrete cracked as the bronze statue toppled onto its back.
The construction workers went wild, screaming at him, running toward him as angry words spewed from their mouths.
“Get back!” Lucas screamed, and thankfully, between the costume and the sound of his voice, he was just scary enough to get the reaction he needed.
“Anything?” Putnam asked.
Lucas looked down into the hole that had been left in the base. At first all he could see was broken concrete, but as he moved aside some pieces of stone, he saw it—a black box.
“Think I’ve got it,” he said, carefully lifting the box from the hole.
“If you don’t, we’re screwed,” Putnam reminded him. “We’ve got two—make that one minute, fifty-eight seconds remaining.”
Lucas tried to ignore the words as he gingerly placed the box on the ground before him and pulled back the lid. His heart skipped a beat as he gazed at a small nuclear explosive. He’d had no idea they could be built this small.
One minute and forty-six seconds, the digital clock on the face of the device informed him.
“What next?” Lucas asked, far more calmly than he had ever dreamed possible.
The crowd was moving closer again, and he screamed at them to keep back.
“Hey, look at the device again, will you?” Putnam shouted in his ear. “I’m trying to figure out how to disarm it.”