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

could talk to Mr. Kinsella, but…Well, he’s not exactly impartial.
    Colin knew who he really wanted to talk to, but he also knew that it could never happen.
She blames me for her father’s death. I’m the last person she wants to hear from.
    He looked at the clock on the screen. It was almost eleven in the evening.
It’s only nine at home.
    Colin grabbed his new cell phone and keyed in a number from memory. The phone rang three times before a voice said, “Yo.”
    Colin grinned. “Hey.”
    There was a pause.
“Colin?”
    “Yep. How are you doing, Brian?”
    “You sound different! You…What the hell…? Do you have any idea…? For God’s sake, Colin! I mean, come
on
!”
    “And in English?”
    “Where
are
you?”
    “Can’t tell you that. Sorry.”
    “You just…I find out that you and Danny are superheroes and the next thing I know you’re getting into a flying car and I never see or hear from either of you again.”
    “Yeah. Sorry about that. We didn’t really have a choice.”
    “It was all over the news. There’re
still
reporters coming to the door looking to interview me! So…What’s it like, being a superhero?”
    “It’s not what I expected.”
    “On the news they keep saying you’ve disappeared. Is that true? That you left the others?”
    “Yeah. There were some problems.”
    “When are you coming home? There’s still a couple of guys guarding your house. They’re just standing there, all day long. You’d think that they might make themselves useful and cut the grass every couple of weeks.”
    Colin sat down on the edge of the bed. “How are you guys doing?”
    “Well, yours truly is now the most popular kid in school. How’s that for a turnabout?” Brian paused. “It’s not all good, you know?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Ever since you and Danny were discovered, there’s been a kind of hunt going on. A hunt for superhumans.”
    Colin didn’t like the sound of that. “How do you mean?”
    “They’re saying that some countries are testing every kid over the age of twelve to see if they have superhuman powers. It’s probably not true, but…”
    “But it might be?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That’s not so bad, Brian.”
    “Well, I heard that there was a girl in Belgium who was pretty average in school but then on one exam she scored top marks, so they took her away and gave her all sort of tests to check whether she was reading the teacher’s mind or something. Turned out that she only did so well on the exam because she’d cheated. So then she got expelled and her family had to move to another town.”
    “I don’t know, Brian…. That sounds like someone made that story up.”
    “Maybe. But the kid who died, that was real.”
    Colin felt his skin begin to crawl. “What was that?”
    “How could you not have heard about that? It was on the news a couple of weeks ago. In Newcastle. He tried to prove to his mates that he had superspeed by standing in front of a train. Took the police three days to find all the bits.”
    “Oh God. That’s…”
    “There’ve been others. Jumping out of windows and breaking their legs seems to be the most common one. There was a girl who thought she had the powers of a cat and climbed up this really high tree and couldn’t get down. They had to get thefire brigade to rescue her. And there was a little kid who nearly drowned seeing whether he could breathe underwater.”
    Colin felt a trickle of sweat running down his neck. “The boy who was hit by the train. If I hadn’t—”
    “Don’t go blaming yourself for that, Col. You’re not responsible for other people’s stupidity. Besides, it was Danny he was trying to copy, not you.”
    That’s not the point,
Colin thought. “Listen, Brian, I’ve really got to go, OK? But I’ll talk to you again.”
    “Soon?”
    “I don’t know. When I can. Take care, all right? And tell your folks and Susie that I said hello.”
    “Will do. See you.”
    “I hope so.”
    Colin ended the call