"Yes, I know. Strange, is it not? Such compassion is surely not expected of the man called the Butcher of Uruk, the Devastator of Empires, the Fifth King. You will tell the leaders of your organization that they need not fear me. This is my gift to the Azurite Order, and I know that your people's custom dictates that a gift cannot be accepted without one given in return."

Alexandria raised her head again, turned to follow him as he walked in his slow circle.

"I was born more than five hundred years ago, Lady Alexandria. I have seen much. I have traveled to places your people do not even know exist. I do not age, and I cannot be killed. I will be here in a hundred years, a thousand, ten thousand. You humans can never know nor fully understand immortality, so you instead try to achieve a semblance of it by erecting statues, by carving your names on the entrances of your tombs. And by having children in the hope that they will remember you well, pass on your story to their offspring. I have never taken a wife. It has always seemed . . . pointless. The beauty of even the most glorious woman will fade with time. She will wither and die. I could never allow myself to love something that could not last. . . . Until today." Krodin reached out his hand and brushed Alexandria's cheek with the backs of his fingers. "In exchange for my pardon of the Azurite Order, their gift to me will be a wife."

CHAPTER 15.

The pilot-Ernie Wieberg-sat bleary-eyed in the copilot seat of the Bell 222B helicopter. He was wrapped in a thick blanket and every few seconds he shivered violently. His nostrils had been stuffed with wads of tissue paper and when he sneezed, the wads would shoot out and he would have to replace them.

Roz Dalton sat next to him with her hands gripping the joystick so tightly that her knuckles were white. Her eyes darted across the instrument board: radar, altitude, artificial horizon, airspeed, back to the radar.

"Gedly," Wieberg said, then noisily snorted and cleared his throat. "Gently. Wodge-watch-the altimeter."

"I know, I know," Roz said. She hated flying, and hated helicopters even more. The only thing keeping them in the air was the powerful engine. At least an airplane had wings and could glide if the engine cut out. If that happened in a helicopter, the craft could fly in only one direction: down.

When her telekinetic powers first appeared, Max-already an established superhero-had insisted that Roz was to receive full training. By the time she'd reached her fourteenth birthday she could drive an armored car, fly a Cessna, and disassemble, clean, and reassemble an assault rifle blindfolded. Monday to Wednesday Roz was tutored in standard school subjects. Thursday and Friday were for military training. Saturdays she was expected to practice using her powers. Sundays were supposed to be for relaxing, but somehow Max always found something for her to do, from looking after their younger brother Joshua to answering his mountains of fan mail.

Roz didn't mind most of it. She was solitary by nature and understood that Max was trying to do his best as a surrogate parent. Sometimes, though, she wondered whether she accepted every order he gave because he was manipulating her thoughts. He had assured her many times that his mind control didn't work on her, but how would she know whether that was true?

"All ride, sed her dowd," Wieberg said. He removed the wads of tissue and loudly blew his nose on a handkerchief.

As Roz eased the copter's joystick forward, Wieberg said, "Slowly . . . Tage her dowd to fibe yards . . ." Another snort. "Five yards."

"Take it down, not her," Roz said automatically. It really bugged her when men talked about machines using the feminine pronoun. She checked the radar again, then looked out through the cockpit's windshield. "OK . . . I think I see him. Hit the spotlight, will you?"

Ahead, a flashlight beam swayed back and forth as Lance McKendrick-standing alone in a field of long grass- waved both arms above his head to attract the copter's attention.

"The spotlight, Ernie," Roz repeated. She glanced at him: The shivering was much worse now, and a film of sweat had broken out on his forehead.

Roz flipped the switch telekinetically, and the spotlight attached to the Bell's undercarriage blazed a beam of light down on Lance. OK, got to do this without any help. Roz frowned in concentration, the tip of her tongue protruding from the side of her mouth. She'd landed the copter only once before without instruction, but Wieberg had been right beside her at the time, ready to take over if she got into trouble.

The copter set down with a heavy thump, bounced once, and settled again. Roz felt a little embarrassed about that, but then remembered something Ox had often said: Any landing you walk away from is a good one.

She shut down the engine, unclipped her harness, and-on legs that were still shaking a little-climbed down and strode through the grass toward Lance.

He was saying something to her but she couldn't hear him over the roar of the copter's rotors. He pointed toward the road. Roz turned to see headlights bouncing their way across the field.

She followed Lance toward the jeep as it came to a stop. It was being driven by a soldier-a private-who didn't look that much older than she was. The two medics in the back jumped out and ran to the copter.

"It's everywhere!" the driver shouted to Roz and Lance. "Been on the news. There's like, millions of people all across the States already infected!" He beckoned them closer.

"Get in. There's only about ten of our guys left who haven't caught it."

Lance jumped into the back, and Roz climbed in beside the driver. "Where are you taking us?" Roz asked.

"Have to pick up that guy Thunder and the girl with the sword." The soldier steered the jeep in a tight arc and headed back the way he had come. "The guys at the CDC are saying that maybe one adult out of every five has already caught it for sure. Luckily most of them have it pretty mild right now. We've had to clamp down on the media reports to stop the civilians panicking, so the official word is that it's just the flu and everything's under control." The jeep hit a furrow and bounced. "Name's Frankie Nazzaro, by the way. So you guys are superhumans, right?"

"She is; I'm not," Lance said.

"You two all right?" Nazzaro asked. "Any symptoms?"

"I'm fine," Roz said.

Lance said, "Me too. Hungry, though. I haven't eaten in hours."

"We'll get you something after we pick up the others." With a final bump, the jeep left the field and steered onto the road. Most of the army trucks and police cars had been cleared away-Roz saw three men climbing into one of the trucks. They were wearing what looked like silver space suits.

"That's the guys from the CDC," Private Nazzaro explained. "Near as anyone can figure, the terrorists blanketed this whole area with the virus sometime during their attack. Don't know how they did it, though."

Roz said, "I left Quantum at Max's safe house. I was hoping that his fast metabolism would have helped him burn through the infection by now, but he's in a really bad way. He was the first of us to be hit with it."

Lance asked, "Do you know what those guys were doing here yet?"

The young man shrugged. "Not a clue. There wasn't anything to steal." He slowed the jeep to a crawl as he eased it past a truck that was parked diagonally across the narrow road. "But these guys, The Helotry or whatever they call themselves . . . The medics are still trying to find out what makes them immune from the plague."

"Why aren't you infected?" Roz asked.

"Reckon I'm too young." He flashed a crooked-toothed grin. "I'm eighteen, but I'm a bit of a late developer. Never thought I'd be pleased about that-the other guys are all, y'know, muscles and stubble and everything. I'm a coupla years behind them. Man, they always give me such a hard time about that. Not anymore, though."

"Is there any word from Paragon?" Roz asked.

Nazzaro shook his head. "I haven't heard. But they don't tell me more than I need to know. Colonel Morgan's been hit pretty bad and the whole chain of command is messed up-we're just trying to do the best we can with what we have left."

Roz decided not to ask him anything else: He was one of those drivers who had to look at their passenger when talking to them.

It was close to midnight, and the roads were almost empty. Nazzaro roared the jeep through the town as though traffic laws didn't apply to him. He cruised through the red light on Main Street, screeched around the corner onto Gardner- taking the turn so wide the jeep ended up on the other side of the road and almost demolished a phone booth-then hit the accelerator.

As they reached the town's outskirts they passed four army trucks going in the opposite direction. Nazzaro honked the horn and waved, but they didn't return his greeting.

"Jerks," Nazzaro muttered. "All right, guys," he shouted. "Keep an eye out for a place called Maple Towers. Should be coming up on the left."

"We already passed it," Lance said, "way back there." He was holding on to the back of Nazzaro's seat.

"OK, hold tight!" Nazzaro slammed on the brakes and spun the wheel at the same time. Roz and Lance were almost thrown out of the jeep as it left curved skid marks across the road.

They roared back the way they had come and eventually turned right into a wide, tree-lined avenue. After a quarter-mile Nazzaro slowed the jeep to a crawl.

Roz and Lance looked around as they waited. It seemed to be a fairly wealthy neighborhood-large houses, plenty of space between them, lawns so perfectly clipped and level they could have been used as pool tables.

After a few moments Lance said, "Now what?"

"Should be around here somewhere," Nazzaro said. "You guys have the exact address?"

Before Roz or Lance could reply, a disembodied voice said, "Stop there. I heard you coming ages ago. I'll be there in a couple of minutes."

Softly, Roz said, "Can you actually hear us right now?"

"Yep," Thunder's voice said.

Nazzaro whistled. "That is one freaky power you have there, kid."

"It's pretty useful at the movies, though," Thunder said. "I can shut out all the sounds around me and concentrate on the show." As he spoke, it sounded to the others like his voice was slowly circling them.

"How are you doing that?" Lance asked.

Thunder's reply came from the left sleeve of Lance's jacket. "I'm agitating the air molecules. Or something. I don't understand the physics of it myself. I just know I can do it."

The location of the sound jumped again, this time coming from Roz's mouth: "I've already spoken to Abby. She's on the way-has to pick up her costume first."

Roz jumped. "OK, never do that again!"

"Sorry. But if you look to your left . . ."

They looked.

"Your other left," Thunder's voice said directly to Lance.

Thunder came running around a corner, dressed in his makeshift superhero costume.

"Abby's on the other side of town," his voice said, though Roz could see that he wasn't moving his lips.

Thunder clambered into the jeep next to Lance. Private Nazzaro fired up the engine again and returned to the main road. This time, however, no matter how heavy Nazzaro's foot was on the accelerator, the engine was completely silent. "I don't want you waking up the whole neighborhood," Thunder explained. "Don't you people ever service your vehicles?"

The soldier shrugged. "Not my department."

"I was watching the news," Thunder said after a few minutes. "People are beginning to panic about the plague. There's going to be riots, looting, murder. . . ."

Lance said, "No there won't. They'll all be too sick to riot."

The older boy gave him a withering look. "Yeah? What if the plague kills all the adults and there's only kids and teenagers left? Imagine a whole bunch of guys just like you trying to run things. The country wouldn't last a week."

"Strange," Lance said. "You'd think that someone who had the superhuman ability to manipulate sound wouldn't need such a big mouth."

"Why are you here, exactly?" Thunder asked. "What can you actually do, apart from steal things and get a whole freeway closed? That was on the news too. Skinny kid on a jet-propelled bike doing two hundred on the freeway and crying his eyes out."

"I was not crying," Lance said. "The wind was in my eyes."

"That's enough," Roz said. "Look, we don't know what The Helotry are up to, but we're probably the only ones who have a chance of stopping them. All the adult superheroes are out of commission. Max has files on almost all of them-each of their hometowns has been targeted with the plague. There's been no reported sightings of any of them since this afternoon. So we're going to have to work together. Start acting like a team."

The others fell silent for a while, then Thunder said, "When you say 'team,' you're not counting this guy, right?" He turned to Lance. "I mean, no offense, kid, but you can't do anything, can you?"

Before Lance could protest, Roz said, "Give it a rest, Thunder! I'm in charge here. I make the decisions."

"Who says you're in charge? I'm the eldest."

Private Nazzaro muttered, "Actually, I'm the eldest."

The others looked at him, then Roz said, "Right. But . . . you're not really on the team."

Another red light was fast approaching-Nazzaro pressed harder on the accelerator. "Why not? I've got military training." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward Lance. "I'm more useful than this guy. No offense, McKendrick."

"None taken," Lance said. "You make a good point. We're going to need all the help we can get."

Roz considered this. He could be right. Max never had any problems working with the Rangers. "All right," she said. "You'll need to check with your superiors, but if they're happy with that, you're in."

Nazzaro turned to her and grinned. "Yes! Always wanted to be a superhero!" He twisted around and smiled at Thunder and Lance. "So what are we going to call ourselves? We need a cool name like The Sensations. Maybe not that, though. Sounds like a sixties beat combo."

Roz grabbed his arm. "Will you watch where you're going?"

"Right, right . . ." The private returned his attention to the road. "My old man's always giving me grief about that." He turned toward Roz again, grinning. "This one time I was-"

"The road!"

"Gotcha. Anyway, I was-"

Something dark and heavy crashed down onto the jeep's hood. Nazzaro screamed and stamped down on the brake. The jeep skidded to a stop and the body kept moving-it hit the ground hard, rolled a good twenty yards, and lay still.

Lance was out of the jeep and running for the body before it had stopped rolling. Roz leaped out after him, slowed as she approached. Lance was in the way, and it was pretty dark. She couldn't see much, but the closer she got the tighter the knot in her stomach became. "Oh no. . . ."

Without turning around, Lance softly said, "It's Abby."

CHAPTER 16.

Twenty-five minutes earlier, Abigail de Luyando had silently pushed open the window of the bedroom she shared with her sister and climbed out onto the fire escape. Instead of descending the creaking metal steps and taking the risk of waking up old Mr. Sutcliffe two floors down, she'd vaulted over the rail and landed in the alley.

Her conversation with Thunder had been odd. She'd been half asleep, going over the day's events in her head, when a voice whispered her name. She'd jumped up and flicked on the light, but the only other person in the room was Vienna, softly snoring to herself.

Then the voice had come again. "It's me, Abby. Thunder." He'd told her how he'd been contacted by Roz and that she was coming to pick them up.

Now, Abby ran along the town's deserted streets. Leftover's-normally open until two in the morning-was dark and empty. She darted past, ducked down the side street, and three minutes later was back on Main Street dressed in her homemade costume. Thunder had told her where he lived, so she started running in that direction.

She was still pulling on her gloves as she reached the front of the diner when she saw the woman standing in the middle of the street, watching her.