Stronger: A Super Human Clash by Michael Carroll Read Free Book Online Page A

deep, cold underground lakes in the caves, and I clearly remember waking up in the cell, but what they did to me in between those events I had no solid idea.
    Eventually, Harmony told me that the soldiers had dumped a hundred gallons of liquid nitrogen into the lake. They’d then chipped me out of the ice and were astonished to discover that I was still alive. That, apparently, had changed everything: They had to learn more about me. “And so we brought you here,” Harmony had said. But she refused to tell me where “here” was.
    Aside from the two guys who brought me my meals and books and once a month herded me into another cell so that mine could be cleaned, and the bunch of guards with guns and gas masks who always accompanied them, Harmony was the only person I saw for months.
    Then one day, as she sat watching me in silence, a pot bellied middle-aged man wearing tan-colored slacks and jacket camefrom the corridor carrying a fold-up chair. He set it down next to her and lowered himself into it, then folded his arms and looked at me. “Remarkable. He’s clearly intelligent.”
    Harmony stared at him for a moment. “And
you
are … ?”
    “Intelligent? Yes, I am. Very. Gordon Tremont, from UCLA. Expert in linguistics, communications, and microprocessor design. Your boss invited me, which is a generous way of saying that I was press-ganged. Threatened with all manner of distasteful events should I refuse, blindfolded and taken in the middle of the night. Two days traveling with not one clue as to where we are. How very paranoid of him. He told me to see if I could, as he put it, ‘make some sense outta that creature’s language.’”
    “I’m not a creature,” I said. Or, rather, I growled.
    Tremont went, “Hmm …” Then he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and said, “Count for me, please. From one to ten.”
    I did as he asked. It sounded like growl, bark, growl, snarl, bark-snarl, growl-bark, and so on. Nothing like it should have.
    “Let’s try again,” Tremont said, “from ten down to one.”
    When I was finished, he nodded. “All the same noises, in correct reverse order. Fascinating. It could just be a form of aphasia.”
    Harmony asked, “Aphasia?”
    “Simply put, a fault in the brain’s language center. He knows the words,
thinks
he’s saying them, but they’re not coming out. He’s definitely intelligent. Well, as intelligent as
any
twelve-year-old boy, I expect.”
    Harmony wet her lips and paused for a moment. “What are you saying, Mr. Tremont?”
    “It’s
Dr.
Tremont, actually. And I’m saying that young Gethin Rao isn’t missing at all.” He pointed to me. “Our taciturn cerulean colossus
is
Gethin Rao. Am I right?”
    I nodded, and pointed to my chest. I couldn’t help grinning—at last, someone understood! I was finally going to get out of here!
    Then Harmony said, “You think we don’t know that?”
    Dr. Tremont and I stared at her.
    “We’ve known from the beginning who he is. But we can’t let that knowledge reach the public. Imagine the panic if people thought that at any moment
they
might undergo a spontaneous transformation into, well, something like that.”
    I roared at her—I can’t remember what I said, but I’m sure it wasn’t nice—and threw myself at the glass door. I bounced back, landed on my feet, and did it again, and again.
    When I’d calmed down a little, Tremont said, “This is in human! I demand that you release him—immediately! The boy does not deserve to be locked away. He has committed no crime!”
    “He resisted arrest,” Harmony said. “
That’s
a crime.”
    “
Reprehensible!
You people … How can you sleep at night? What if
your
child was taken away for no reason?”
    “I don’t have—”
    “Shut up!” he roared at her, loud enough that she actually flinched—it was the first time I’d seen her lose her composure. Still looking at Harmony, Tremont pointed to me. “You willrelease that boy! Immediately! Or,