Titans Page 6

  ‘And I’d like to see whether anyone is studying this Titan phenomenon,’ Nick said. ‘It’s fascinating. If no one else is doing it, I’d like to.’

  ~~~

  ‘I have no objection at all,’ Faith said. ‘I’ll have the appropriate permit put through this afternoon. Do you need a weapon?’

  ‘I have a pistol,’ Mercy replied, ‘but if I could get one for Joe… He’s been trained to use one and I may not always be around to watch Sophia. Like now. When I’m here because the others thought their commander should talk to the president.’

  ‘I’ll make the arrangements. He can fly, I understand.’

  ‘Discovered it this morning.’

  ‘There aren’t too many flyers, but I don’t think that’s going to make him a target.’

  ‘Okay… Do you mind if I ask a few questions?’

  Faith grinned. ‘I’m a very busy woman, Colonel.’

  ‘Of course, I–’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly take time out of my schedule to answer your– Please do anything to relieve the boredom!’

  ‘Ah. Okay. You’ve been at this for almost fifty years. You’ve fought minor wars to hold your ground. Where are the bullets coming from? Your people are using caseless rifles. It’s not easy making ammunition for those.’

  ‘It is if you’re the right kind of Maker. To be honest, he’s not a very agreeable person, at least from our point of view. We asked him to move here and supply us exclusively, but he refuses. He supplies anyone who’s willing to pay for his services, and he maintains his independence because a lot of groups would be willing to put aside their differences to get him back should any one group try to monopolise him.’

  ‘I see. This is why you’re happy to have Sophia here. Even if she can’t just make whatever she wants, she can make things work that don’t without having to scrounge parts.’

  ‘Exactly. Speaking of which, we’d like her to look at some equipment we have in storage. I’m trying to be nice and make the NYA look like a caring state, but–’

  ‘I think she’d be happy to. There’s not really a lot to do around here.’

  ‘It’s not an invalid point. Anything else?’

  ‘Where does the power come from? Joe said he saw power cables strung between a lot of buildings up around Harlem. The apartments and this place have power. I don’t see a lot of wind turbines and solar cells.’

  ‘Harlem and the Heights house our hydroponics facilities. We grow inside to protect the plants from storms, which means we need to provide light. Hence the power cables. We had to lay a lot of cable ourselves because the city’s grid was more or less destroyed in the Wave. As for where it comes from… That would be our greatest asset and our greatest liability. Indian Point.’

  ‘The fusion reactor? That survived?’

  Faith nodded. ‘It was shut down before the Wave arrived. Damage was minimal. Because of the reputation that place has, it was built as a pure deuterium reactor. Less of a radiation hazard, I’m told. However, that proved to be perfect because it can extract its own fuel from the river. It was never quite enough to keep the old city running, but for the current population it’s fine. We had some people with us when we arrived who could get it running again. They’ve trained several minor Titans to keep it going. Titans, in case you weren’t aware, are able to heal radiation damage from their systems far better than normal humans.’

  ‘That’s a useful perk, I guess.’

  ‘Despite efforts in the thirty years before the Wave to finally dispose of the nation’s nuclear waste products effectively, there were still thirty locations in the US containing high-level nuclear waste. They’ve been untended for fifty years and some of them probably suffered damage. There were still five working fission reactors when the Wave hit. More overseas. Being resistant to radiation is a plus.’

  ‘Ah. I suppose I shouldn’t worry about my dosage from the trip to Saturn either.’

  ‘Probably not.’ Faith paused, frowning. ‘Of course, having one of the few working fusion reactors makes us more of a target. Other groups want it. It’s also fourteen miles north of our theoretical border, and we have to keep fourteen miles of transmission cables safe. That’s a major drain on our security resources. We’ve had to fortify the reactor facility pretty heavily. So, major asset, major headache.’

  Mercy nodded. ‘I’m not really a strategist, but it’s a lousy tactical position. Okay, Nick wants to know whether anyone is studying Titans, trying to figure out how they work. If they aren’t, he wants to.’

  ‘He needs to talk to Waveguide. They’re a group of scientists. A network really. They have labs in a couple of enclaves across the continent. One of their biggest is here. I’ll arrange a meeting. Doctor Harris may be just the kind of person they’d be interested in.’

  ‘I’d like to be in on that meeting. I’d like to know more about Titans too. Lastly, and least important, I guess. Sophia wants to buy some new clothes. Where are the shops? Are there shops?’

  ‘Greenwich District. Around Greenwich Village as was. There are shops. Some sell clothing. Well, they’ll trade clothes. Take some of those food packs and you should be able to work a deal. I hope she isn’t hoping for designer outlets.’

  ‘I think anything to change into is more what she’s thinking. She’s right. We look weird walking around in these jumpsuits.’

  Faith nodded. ‘You do… A word of advice. When negotiating, let them know you’re a Titan. Don’t push it. Make it subtle. Don’t do anything to scare them, but… Sophia said that your eyes were glowing in that incident with the Organisation.’

  ‘And I apparently had blue, glowing veins over my face and neck,’ Mercy added sourly.

  ‘Right. Try practising in front of a mirror. Some emotions can bring it out without using your power. If you seem friendly and you can make the glow appear, people will see you as a Titan in control of her powers. They’ll respect you. And, most importantly, they may give you a discount.’

  ‘I’ll… see what I can do. Do other Titans have this glowing-eye thing?’

  Faith’s eyes narrowed a little in concentration and, after a second, a blue glow appeared in her pupils, spreading out to light up her irises too. ‘I can only do the eyes. If you can do the vein thing too, it usually indicates more overt power. The most powerful get this, um, glowing smoke or drifting flames effect from their eyes too. And some Titans don’t have such good control. They have the eyes and sometimes the veins all the time. Most people are just afraid of Titans like that.’

  ‘And this is why I’d like to talk to some scientists about all of this. Is there a manual?’

  ‘Oh, God, I wish there was! I would pay a month’s rations for a book that explained what the fuck’s going on even half the time.’

  Mercy winced. ‘That’s not very encouraging…’

  28th April.

  Waveguide had taken over a building on 1st Avenue not too far from the ruins of the United Nations building. Apparently, the latter structure had collapsed during a particularly intense Wave Storm some twenty years ago. No one was quite sure why.

  Technically, Waveguide had taken over the building and had ten storeys of offices and such available, but the reality was that they had a few people working on the first two floors and most of their facilities built in the car park under the building. Prefabricated, mobile units had been put up down there to house equipment that would have been damaged or destroyed in any Wave Storm which happened to hit the area.

  Noah Wheatley had an office in one of these cabins. He was the technical director of Waveguide NYA, according to the little nameplate on the door. The owner of the name and office was a slim, studious sort of man with slightly untidy, short-cropped, dirty-blonde hair and green eyes, the latter hidden behind wire-framed spectacles. He wore a patchy lab coat over dark jeans and a T-shirt, and sneakers. There were three pens and a propelling pencil in the breast pocket of the lab coat. If you were inclined, he was attractive. The inclination had to be toward i
ntelligent, nerdy guys.

  ‘I think it’s Doctor Harris, isn’t it?’ Wheatley asked as he pumped Nick’s hand.

  ‘Nick is fine,’ Nick replied.

  ‘That’s good. I’m Noah. We haven’t had institutions able to hand out doctorates for five decades. I’m told by some of my older colleagues that I could probably have got one. Frankly, there doesn’t seem to be that much point in our current situation.’

  ‘I can understand that. And this is Colonel Mercy Garner, mission commander aboard Theia, den mother now we’re back on Earth. She’s more of a technician than a scientist, but she’s very interested in Titans, especially since she discovered she is one.’

  Mercy was letting Nick take the lead, even if she was his ‘den mother’ – she would have to get him for that one later – and she was also a little reluctant to take Wheatley’s offered hand. The man had a very enthusiastic handshake. ‘Just Mercy is fine,’ she said. ‘It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Noah.’

  ‘Oh, the pleasure is all mine, Mercy. What kind of Titan are you? Of course, the common distinctions are not entirely exclusive, but most fit into the basic categories.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you tell me what categories there are. I’ve heard of Healers and Makers, and I don’t fit either of those.’

  ‘Ah! Engaging me on my favoured topic. Excellent conversational strategy. Sit down and we’ll talk.’ He sat at his desk, a cheap office desk which might have come from upstairs, on a leather office chair with worn patches on the armrests. That left a couple of painfully hard straight-backed chairs on the other side for Mercy and Nick. ‘There are four basic categories, plus a special category reserved for physical changes. You mentioned Healers and Makers. Their powers are fairly self-explanatory, though the Healers category covers any ability to affect the body of an organism. Some Healers are better at killing than healing. Elemental powers affect various forms of energy. The most commonly seen is fire, which resulted in the name, but a close second is electricity and you also see light. Finally, we have the Disruptors.’

  ‘Disruptors?’ Mercy asked.

  Wheatley grimaced. ‘The common name. They disrupt the natural order of things. I prefer to call them Space-Time powers, which is what they appear to manipulate. It’s a very broad category. President Richard’s ability to sense Wave Storms is in there, as is the ability of some Titans to determine their position without a compass. Telekinesis and flight fall into the same category along with gravity control. And Disruptors are frequently capable of disintegrating matter.’

  ‘It seems that I’m a Disruptor then.’

  ‘Well, Titans don’t always fit into one category. President Richard has the Disruptor ability to sense storms, and the Healer ability to cause rapid healing in those around her. You may have other powers which aren’t Disruptor powers. Titans… don’t even follow their own rules.’

  ‘What about strength enhancement?’

  ‘A Disruptor power, unless accompanied by marked physical changes. The Titan uses force redirection to assist their muscles.’

  Mercy forced a grin; being a Disruptor did not sit well with her. ‘Ha! Knew it. Or I theorised that it was some sort of force generation. Uh, you mentioned “marked physical changes.” Does that include glowing eyes?’

  ‘Yes, though if it’s not constant, it’s a change which is considered a good thing. The physical change most people are aware of is the Juggernaut classification. The Damned, the leader of the Damned Ones, is a Juggernaut. Very big, very strong, very difficult to hurt. Can you show me your Burning Eyes, Mercy?’

  ‘Is that what you call them? Uh, I can’t seem to summon them at will. I was trying last night for… reasons President Richard suggested. I can’t do it.’

  ‘The effect is commonly known as Burning Eyes, yes, and it shows when using your powers, but also under stress. Strong emotions. Perhaps intense emotions would be a better term. Anger, terror, arousal. Most can eventually do it on command, but not all. Perhaps… Would you be willing to allow us to record your ability at work? It would give Nick a chance to see our methods and you may learn something about your power. We would certainly get a look at your Burning Eyes.’

  ‘Well, I guess it’s for science…’

  ~~~

  It took a little time to set up. After thirty or so minutes, Mercy was standing in an almost empty portacabin surrounded by video cameras and a few other devices which were going to record what happened. There was also a small table, upon which was a lump of scrap metal someone had found from somewhere. That was her victim, giving its existence for science.

  The cameras fed to two more tables at the far end of the room. The tables were there to support a bunch of monitors and several computers. The computers looked serviceable, dust-free, and clearly operational, but they also looked old. They had been cobbled together from scavenged parts, as had a lot of high-end electronics in the post-Wave world.

  Behind the tables, Wheatley and Nick were watching the monitors, along with a small woman with a vaguely harried expression who appeared to be some sort of technician. She had done most of the work of setting everything up.

  Finally, Wheatley said, ‘When you’re ready, Mercy.’

  Briefly, Mercy worried that her ‘lightsabre’ would not appear unless she was under stress, but she focused on the concept of it, the feeling of energy she had had when the Organisation goons had attacked, and suddenly there was a two-metre beam of blue light emerging from her hand. Luckily, she had remembered to position her hand so that the beam had not emerged through anything.

  ‘Fascinating,’ Wheatley said.

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ Mercy pointed out.

  ‘The beam is emitting light in a very tight line at four hundred and forty-six nanometres. I believe your eyes are emitting at the same wavelength. It’s a very pure emission spectrum which does not correspond to the ionised nitrogen spectrum.’

  ‘It’s… kind of beautiful,’ Nick said. ‘You can’t feel the effect on your face or neck, Mercy?’

  Mercy lifted her free hand to trace her fingers over her cheek. There was no difference under her fingertips, she felt no different, and she could see normally. ‘Nothing specific about the skin. I feel… energised, but not in veins across my face or anything.’

  ‘Perhaps you should apply that beam to your target,’ Wheatley suggested.

  ‘Right.’ She moved her arm and brought the beam down onto the irregular piece of rusty junk. It might once have been a part in a car’s engine. Maybe. There was no sound, no flashes of light or arcs of lightning. Where the beam touched the metal, Mercy could see the rust evaporating and then, after only two seconds, the metal entirely lost its structural integrity. One instant there was a lump of metal there, the next it had collapsed into a pile of metallic fragments and dust. It did not look like what was left represented all of the original mass either; some of it had vanished into thin air.

  ‘Fascinating!’ Wheatley put one hand on his technician’s shoulder. ‘Be sure to collect all the residue. We’ll want to do a complete structural and material analysis.’

  ‘Of course, Director,’ the technician replied, rather as though that were obvious and she was humouring her boss.

  The beam vanished from wherever it had come. ‘What happened to it?’ Mercy asked. ‘What is that beam doing to whatever it hits?’

  ‘This is conjecture,’ Wheatley replied, ‘but my hypothesis is that it acts upon the strong interaction, negating it.’

  ‘And for the non-physicists here?’

  ‘The strong interaction, the strong nuclear force, holds quarks together within hadrons and binds the hadrons within an atomic nucleus. Negate it and–’

  ‘The atoms fly apart.’

  ‘Precisely!’

  ‘Shouldn’t that create a lot of radiation?’ Nick asked, frowning at one of the screens.

  ‘Yes! Of course, and…’ Wheatley looked at the same screen Nick was looking at and began frowning. ‘We detected no r
adiation.’ His expression shifted once again: intrigued glee turning toward exultation. ‘Could it be that you are negating the field excitations of the particles themselves?!’ He sighed. ‘If only we had the equipment to truly study this phenomenon. We could advance physics by centuries.’

  ‘Uh, I’m not really a scientist,’ Mercy said, ‘but I know one or two things. Like E equals MC squared. Shouldn’t cancelling out some particle need a tremendous amount of energy?’

  ‘It should. In all probability, a large amount of negative energy would be required.’

  ‘And where does that come from?’

  ‘Our current hypothesis is that the Wave created an energetic standing wave within the Earth’s core, an additional component to the existing geomagnetic field. Hence the inaccuracy of compasses and the electrical characteristics of Wave Storms. We believe Titans are able to tap into this energy, though how they do this is a source of some argument.’

  ‘That doesn’t fit the facts, I’m afraid,’ Nick said.

  ‘It doesn’t?’

  ‘While Mercy only exhibited this ability after arriving back on Earth, two of our colleagues have been able to use theirs since we emerged from stasis. It seems unreasonable that an energy source here on Earth would power abilities in someone eight and a half astronomical units away.’

  ‘Fascinating… I’ll have to communicate this through the network immediately. We must be looking for a far more fundamental source of energy. It must be something which exists on a universal, cosmic scale. Perhaps… Perhaps Titans are powered by whatever powered the Wave itself. Fascinating. Truly fascinating.’

  ~~~

  ‘If he had said “fascinating” one more time, I think he’d have found out exactly what it felt like to have his face disintegrated.’

  Nick flashed a grin at Mercy. They were walking back to their apartments and the conversation had been largely about what they had learned. ‘Perhaps we could make it a drinking game. Video him and take a drink every time–’

  ‘No. Just no. We’d all die of alcohol poisoning.’ Mercy frowned. ‘Actually, have you seen any booze here since we got back?’