Pegasus and the New Olympians (27 page)

With little effort, Jupiter diverted them and they flew wildly into more buildings. ‘Father,’ Diana roared excitedly, ‘if they wish to fight, let us give them a fight!’

At Jupiter’s command, the Olympians launched themselves at the military. Jupiter ordered Paelen and Chrysaor to move away from the battle until it was over, as they had no weapons and no means of protecting themselves. Not waiting to be told twice, they flew away from the fighting and headed to the tall black building. Ducking and dodging between the buildings and helicopters that pursued them, they finally made it back to the relative safety of the roof of the black building. Standing together, they watched the fight raging in Las Vegas.

Not far from their roof, three military helicopters pursued Neptune’s chariot on his living wave of water. They fired their guns and launched their rockets at him. But Neptune fought back. He raised his trident in the air. Water spouts rose from the ground and knocked the rockets away. They flew straight at the city’s tallest golden tower. With the impact of multiple rockets, the tall tower shuddered. Finally, like a great monster defeated in battle, it tipped over and crashed violently to the ground.

‘Chrysaor, look,’ Paelen said in hushed shock as he pointed further up the strip. Helicopters and jets were firing at Jupiter’s chariot and the one containing Diana and Emily’s father. But the weapons did not strike their mark. They were deflected by the Olympians’ powers and crashed into the big black pyramid. The light at its top went out, the windows exploded and the building burst into flame.

‘The military are destroying their own city in the hopes of stopping us. Can they not see the damage they are doing to their people? The lives they are wrecking? They cannot defeat Jupiter – why are they even trying?’

Paelen couldn’t understand any of it. Not everyone in this city was bad, and yet they were being destroyed. Perhaps in the past he might not have cared. But after growing to know and love Emily and Joel, he had learned how good humans could be. Watching this destruction only made it sadder.

Chrysaor squealed in horrified agreement as they stood together watching the destruction of Las Vegas.

Emily sat alone in her room. She was reeling from what the doctors and scientists said. After the strange blood results, Emily had allowed them to examine her fully. Not only was she not human any more, she wasn’t really ‘alive’. It was true that she had blood. It was red and it was wet. But it didn’t have any cells in it. And although she had internal organs and a beating heart, they were not necessary to her survival.

‘What am I?’ she said aloud. ‘Pegasus, what happened to me in the Temple of the Flame?’

Emily heard the sounds of a scuffle outside her door. She hopped over just as it was opened by a Nirad. Out in the corridor, A-Two and A-Three were lifting several unconscious human soldiers off the floor. They carried them into her room and deposited them on the bed.

‘What happened?’ she asked as the Nirads bound the soldiers.

‘Prince – frightened – trouble – go!’

‘Prince Tobin is in trouble?’

A-Two nodded. ‘Come.’ Without asking, he scooped her up in two of his arms and carried her into the corridor.

Emily pushed aside her concerns for herself. At the moment her only thought was for Prince Tobin. As they entered the stairwell and started down, she tried to ask the Nirads what was happening, but their single-word answers puzzled her.

After several flights, the three Nirads stopped. A-Two dropped Emily. He and the others collapsed to the floor clutching their heads.

‘Hurt – prince!’ A-Two cried. ‘Pain!’

Fear coursed through her. ‘They’re hurting Tobin?’

A-Two nodded and howled in agony.

‘Please, I know you’re hurting. But you must take me to him. I can help!’

Black tears of suffering were streaming down the Nirads’ faces as A-Two picked up Emily again. Other collapsed Nirads were howling in the stairwell.

‘Come with us,’ Emily ordered. ‘We will free Tobin!’

A-Two roared at the others. They staggered to their feet and started to follow.

The growing group continued down deeper than Emily thought possible. She realized Agent PS had been very selective in his ‘tour’ of the CRU facility. He’d claimed it only went down a few levels. He’d lied.

At the very bottom, Emily heard growls and roars filling the corridor. She recognized Tirk’s voice. But worse than that, she heard Prince Tobin screaming in agony.

The closer they were to the screaming, the harder it became for her Nirad escorts to move.

A-Two collapsed to the floor. ‘Pain!’

Emily crawled from his arms. ‘I’ll stop your pain. Wait here.’

Without her leg brace, walking was difficult and running impossible. But then her mind went back to the scientist’s horrible words. She wasn’t human. She wasn’t even alive. Emily pulled up her trouser leg past her knee and looked at her damaged leg. It had been hurt in her first encounter with the Nirads. But as she studied the deep scars and ruined muscles, Emily wondered if the scars were only there because she thought they should be.

Emily concentrated harder than she ever had in her life. ‘Your leg is whole,’ she ordered. ‘There is no damage. It is perfect!’

The screaming of her friends threatened to distract her. But Emily closed her eyes to force it away and concentrate. ‘You leg is whole!’ she commanded. ‘There is no damage.’

She opened her eyes and slowly looked down. Her bare leg was healed. No more scars and no more damage. She lifted her foot and flexed her muscles. They worked perfectly. Part of her celebrated her success. But deep down, in the darkest recesses of her mind, a part of her cried in despair. It was true. Emily Jacobs was gone. And if she wasn’t human or Olympian, what was she?

With two good working legs, Emily ran forward. She pushed through a set of double doors and entered a room of horrors.

The walls were lined with large steel cages holding what looked like failed clone experiments. She saw a Diana with four Nirad arms and no legs. There were Nirads with grotesque Cupid wings. Some of the creatures had two heads and were lying on the floors of their cages in misery. Others were beyond rational description. From her place at the door, Emily could feel their pain coming at her in waves.

These were the failures Agent PS didn’t want her to see. The price they paid for creating a super-race of New Olympians and Nirad fighters.

In the centre of the room, Prince Tobin was strapped to a table. Gold bands pinned him down and were burning into his bare pink flesh. It was Earth gold, so it wouldn’t kill him. But it scalded him until his skin smouldered, opened and bled. She watched scientists extracting fresh black blood and skin samples from the suffering young prince.

Tirk was pounding his fists against the gold bars of his cage. With each contact, he howled in pain. But his loyalty to his prince kept him at it.

Emily was so stunned she didn’t know where to look next.

‘What are you doing here?’ Agent R demanded furiously. ‘You are not allowed down here.’

He was standing back from the table and holding a medical mask to his face. Around him, other scientists in caps, masks and white jackets were crowding round the prince. Their gloves were wet with the Nirad’s blood.

Watching her friend being tortured was too much to bear. Emily raised her hand and fired her powers. The scientists were tossed away from the prince and landed on the floor several metres away.

Emily ran up to the dissection table. The prince’s eyes were shut as he writhed and howled in pain. The tight gold bands were cutting deep into his smoking, opened flesh. Emily saw the scalpels and tools the scientists were using on him had also been made of gold.

She used the flame like a laser to cut away the straps keeping him pinned down. But then she saw that the entire bed of the table was also made of gold. Every part of his back was being burned.

Emily caught hold of one of the prince’s hands and started to tug. Tobin was not a large Nirad, but he was heavy. Too heavy for her to lift. As he continued to howl in pain, Emily focused her powers.

‘Lift!’ she commanded.

Concentrating on what she needed to do, Emily felt her powers answering. Prince Tobin started to rise above the table. She turned to the side and lowered him gently to the floor.

Prince Tobin was awake and looking at her in misery. Emily cradled his head in her lap and started to stroke his face. ‘I’m so sorry, Tobin,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know they knew about gold. It’s over now; you’re safe.’

As she stroked him, Tobin’s open wounds started to close. It was slow and not complete, but it was enough to save the Nirad’s life.

Now that the prince’s pain was greatly diminished, the Nirads were released from their agony too. A-Two, A-Three and all the Nirad soldiers from outside the lab charged in. They knelt down on the floor around their prince. Tobin raised his four arms and greeted his new people.

Tirk continued to pound the bars and howl. Emily burned the lock off the gold cage door. Tirk charged out. He barked furiously and pushed through the others to get to the prince. Finally he lifted Prince Tobin in his arms and hugged the young Nirad. Emily saw that his hands were burned raw from pounding the cage. But he didn’t notice. All he cared about was his prince.

‘Emily, stop, you don’t know what you’re doing!’ Agent R was moving closer.

‘Stay back,’ Emily warned. ‘It’s over. All of this is finished. No more torture, no more clones.’

Tirk’s eyes flashed with uncontained fury as he looked over at Agent R. He handed the prince over to another Nirad and ran at the CRU agent. Emily turned away as Tirk punished Agent R for his part in the torture of his prince.

Emily looked around the large room at all the clones and worried. What was to become of them now? She approached one of the mutant Dianas’ cages. It had only one arm and three Nirad legs as it stepped forward and reached for her. Her Nirad black eyes seemed to have no understanding other than the desperate need to touch Emily.

Emily reached in and cradled the creature’s face in her hands. ‘I promise you will be free soon,’ she said. As her eyes panned over all the cages, her heart – whether she had a real one or not – went out to them. ‘You will all be free!’

Her temper rose as she charged back to Prince Tobin and the Nirads. She concentrated on the Nirad soldiers. ‘Capture the scientist and bring them.’ She looked at Agent R as he struggled to rise after being struck by Tirk.

‘It’s over, Agent R. This all ends, now!’

Sirens blared and soldiers armed themselves as Emily stormed through the corridors of the CRU facility at Area 51. Behind her followed an army of Nirad soldiers. Prince Tobin was being carried in the arms of Tirk as he summoned his people together.

Soon the number of Nirads joining her outnumbered the humans at the facility. Emily looked back at Prince Tobin. With each passing moment, his strength was returning.

‘Would you please ask some of your men to find Joel and Agent T and guard them? And we need to locate a man called Earl. He is a friend and is here somewhere.’

‘I – go,’ A-Three said. ‘Find – Earl.’ He called several Nirads forward. They ran ahead into the stairwell. Gunfire echoed in the long stairwell, but Emily knew it would not hurt the Nirads.

As they made their way through the huge facility, Emily asked the Nirad soldiers to round up all the humans and get them to the ground level. Emily kept A-Two back to help her find her way back to the main lab. Halfway there, she heard a familiar and very welcome voice.

‘Em!’

She turned and saw Joel running towards her, escorted by two large grey Nirads.

‘You didn’t think I was going to let you total Area 51 alone!’ Joel grinned.

Emily felt stronger with Joel at her side. ‘Of course not.’

Together they made their way through the chaos to the super-lab where the clones were created. Nirads were capturing scientists and agents, disarming them and leading them up to ground level.

Joel looked through the window of the super-lab and whistled. With the alarms still blaring, the night shift of scientists were busy trying to store away the cloning materials. They looked up in terror when they saw them standing at the large picture window.

‘Can you nuke that lab without burning down the whole facility?’

‘I can try,’ Emily said.

The Nirads tore down the secured doors to the lab and poured in. The scientists were rounded up and presented to her.

‘Get them to the surface with the others,’ Emily ordered.

Joel and Emily now walked through the empty lab and began to destroy the equipment. With each passing moment, Emily’s confidence with the Flame grew. By the time they had left the lab, Emily could look at a machine and turn it to ash in a matter of seconds.

They moved on to the secondary labs. Emily showed Joel and Prince Tobin the tall tubes that contained the clones in various stages of development from embryonic to nearly fully grown.

‘What do we do with these?’ Joel said.

‘I don’t know,’ Emily admitted. ‘We can’t destroy them; they’re alive.’

‘But we can’t leave them here either. The CRU will just build more.’

Emily shook her head. ‘Once everyone is out of here, I’m going to destroy the place.’

‘And these guys?’

‘We’re just going to have to find a way to save them. Let’s get everyone else out of here first and worry about these guys later.’

In another lab they came across Joel’s silver arm. It was laid out on a table and had been completely dismantled and was now useless. Paelen’s winged sandals were found in the same lab and they were grateful to discover these were intact. Emily prayed that Paelen was still alive and ready to wear them again. They also found Pluto’s helmet.

‘Boy, am I glad to see this!’ Joel said. ‘Pluto would have had a fit if he knew we’d lost it.’

Emily dropped her head. ‘No, we didn’t lose it. We just lost Pegasus and Alexis instead. I’m sure Pluto won’t care about his helmet after that.’

Prince Tobin growled softly. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back. When he opened his eyes again, he concentrated on Emily and made several sounds.