6

      JOSEPH STEPPED DOWN from the helicopter and looked around. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses one of the soldiers had given him, but the light from the setting sun still hurt his eyes.

      The copter had landed at the bottom of a small canyon, barely a hundred metres across. A set of huge steel doors were set into the canyon wall.

      “Who are you?” he asked the woman. “What is this place?”

      “Call me Rachel. We’re in California. It’s an abandoned gold mine.”

      “How long was I locked up?”

      “Ten years. Almost to the day. I have to know… your abilities?”

      He gave her a weak smile. “Gone, of course. Do you think I’d have stayed there if I’d still had my powers? It was only a concrete cell. Why… why did you wait so long?”

      “After the battle-tank, everything fell apart. It’s taken us this long to rebuild. It’s not as though we could operate openly. And no one knew where you were.”

      They began to walk towards the steel doors, which were now slowly creaking open.

      A young man walked out and stopped in front of them. “Joseph, I presume?”

      Joseph nodded. “Who are you?”

      “This is Victor Cross,” Rachel said. “He’s the one who tracked you down.”

      Cross said, “We have some quarters set up for you. They should be a lot more pleasant that your prison cell.”

      “You know who I am?”

      “Of course. I know everything about you.”

      Joseph stood in silence for a few seconds, then said, “I know I’m not the man I once was, Mr Cross, and I’m very much afraid that all that time as a prisoner has affected me. I find it hard to focus and even the smallest of things can distract me, but I’m not entirely stupid. Why did you wait so long before freeing me?”

      Victor regarded him for a moment. “Honestly?”

      “Yes. Honestly.”

      “We didn’t need you until now.”

      “I see. I feel… different. Clearer. Were they doing something to me in that place? Drugging me – to keep me docile?”

      “Almost certainly,” Victor said.

      “And what about the boy? What’s happening there?”

      Victor ignored the question and called over two workers. “Escort this gentleman to the med-lab. We’ll be there shortly. Give him anything he wants, understood?”

      Joseph smiled. “How old are you, Cross?”

      “Almost twenty-one.”

      “So you’re too young to have been one of us, then? You weren’t a superhuman?”

      “No. I was only ten years old when Ragnarök’s machine was used.”

      Joseph smiled again and nodded.

      Rachel and Victor watched as he was led away.

      “What do you think?” Victor asked.

      She shrugged. “He was definitely being drugged back at the prison. Some sort of low-level scopolamine to keep him relaxed and compliant. It should be completely out of his system in the next couple of hours.”

      “It had better not be,” Victor said. “We want him relaxed and compliant. Make sure that he stays that way, got that?”

      “Sure.”

      She followed Victor into the mine.

      “So… the break out was a success,” Rachel said.

      “Obviously.”

      “I’ll write up a full report for you.”

      Without looking at her, Victor said, “We have Joseph and you weren’t traced. What’s to report?”

      “We left the Warden alive, but it’ll be a few more hours before he wakes.”

      Victor nodded.

      Rachel followed him up the metal stairway. “Don’t you want to know who the other inmates were?”

      “Not really.”

      “You did a good job locating the prison.”

      Victor stopped outside his office and turned to her. “Rachel, I have work to do. If you want to make small talk, find someone else.”

      He went into his office and closed the door behind him. He sat down at his desk, switched on his computer and keyed a number into his phone.

      The call was answered immediately. It was the electronically-disguised voice again.

      “Talk to me,” the voice said.

      “We have him,” Victor said.

      “Good,” the voice said. “You’re at your terminal?”

      “Yes.”

      “Find the file called Protégé. The password is ‘Apotheosis’. The file will tell you everything you need to know. Got that?”

      “Got it.” Victor disconnected the call and began typing.

      He found the file, entered the password and read through it.

      Then he made another phone call. After a couple of seconds, a man’s voice said, “Hello?”

      Reading from the computer screen, Victor said, “Icebreaker.”

      There was a pause. “Say again?”

      “Icebreaker.”

      Another pause and the man sighed. Then he said, “Damocles.”

      Victor read the counter-code. “Ultimatum.”

      The man said, “I… I understand.” After a brief discussion, he gave Victor his location, then asked, “When?”

      “Within the hour. Be ready. This is a code-one extraction. Do you understand what that means?”

      “Yes. It means that you want the boys no matter what it takes. Everything else