Free The Reckoning: Quantum Prophecy Book 3 by Michael Carroll Page A

“That’s when he started teaching us about the armor, and how to fly with the jetpack. But the karate started before that. When we were eight.”
    Mrs. Cord pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “Oh my God. Sol lied to me. He promised me that he was only teaching you karate for self-defense.”
    “He was protecting you, Mom,” Alia said. “He always said—”
    “Tell me about that boy. What happened?”
    Stephanie said, “Three guys were going to attack me and Karen, and this other guy tried to save us. He was in over his head. They were going to kill him.”
    Vienna Cord said, “We do not
need
this, Stephanie. If people learn who we really are…Well, God only knows what they might do. The Trutopians are furious about what happened on that island, and it’s bringing back all the stuff about Dioxin masquerading as your father.”
    Alia said, “Look, Mom…You have to get in touch with the people in Sakkara, tell them what’s happening here. Maybe they can move us to somewhere else.”
    “No!” Stephanie said. “I don’t want to have anything to do with them.”
    “We might not have any choice,” her mother said.
    For a moment, Stephanie was silent. Then she said, “This is all because Colin found Dad. If he hadn’t, we’d all still be in Virginia. None of this would have happened.”
    Her mother said, “Stephanie, if you’re going to go down that road, you might as well say it’s all your father’s fault for choosing to be a superhero in the first place.”
    Stephanie found that her mouth had suddenly gone dry. She swallowed. “He…he was training me to replace him, and he wanted me to be ready, but I kept putting it off and…
You
know. I just wanted to have some fun and I thought that there’d be plenty of time to train…. There were real superhumans in Sakkara so I didn’t think that I was going to be needed. But if I…If I’d tried, if I’d trained harder, like he kept asking me to…Oh God, Mom! I’m so sorry! It was
my
fault! If I’d been ready…I might have been able to save him!”
    In his hotel room in Satu Mare, Colin Wagner had been sitting for hours, watching UNC—the Universal News Channel—on the television.
    God, what a mess…
Colin thought to himself.
How could they have let it get this bad?
    The news channel was now repeating all the footage of his battle with Dioxin over the streets of Topeka. The voice-over said, “And in the four months since, no one has seen or heard from Colin Wagner, the son of Titan and Energy. Eyewitnesses say that he referred to himself by the name ‘Power’ in this last battle against Paragon.”
    “Dioxin, not Paragon,” Colin said aloud. This particular reporter didn’t seem to be able to tell the difference between amurdering supervillain and one of the greatest heroes who ever lived.
    The screen cut back to the reporter in the studio. “The rest of the New Heroes—Daniel Cooper, the girl known as Diamond and a young American man whose name has not yet been made public—have apparently been involved in a number of covert operations for the U.S. military, the most recent being yesterday’s attack on the small Central American island of Isla del Tonatiuh. With a special report on the island, we now go live to our Central American correspondent Layton Mortimer.”
    “Thanks, Tom. Isla del Tonatiuh—known as The Island of the Sun God—was discovered in the sixteenth century by—”
    Colin muted the sound, then pushed himself out of his chair and began to pace the room.
    So what do I do? If Danny and the others really are targeting the Trutopians then…What does that mean? Do they know something about the Trutopians? Or is it just that the world’s governments are scared of losing power so they want to get at the Trutopians any way they can?
    If I had someone to talk to, maybe I could figure it out.
    He wondered what time it was in Kansas.
No, I can’t phone anyone in Sakkara. They’d trace the call and find me.
I suppose I