Chapter 33
EVERYBODY WAS WIDE awake when I parked the ATV in front of Xanthos’s barn.
Our video monitors had just exploded with images of violent, catastrophic destruction.
Buildings toppled over. Fires raged. People rioted and looted and turned on one another.
If hanging out with Mel that day we went horseback riding was, according to my spiritual advisor, “experiencing humanity at its best,” then what we were currently witnessing in high-definition surround sound was the flip side of that same coin: humanity at its absolute worst.
“He’s hitting New York, London, Moscow, and Beijing!” exclaimed Agent Judge. “All at the same time.”
Grainy images of mayhem from the four far-flung locations flickered across the screens. My eyes darted back and forth to verify what I was seeing. I could hear his voice cooing “Surrender to me!” in English and Russian and Chinese.
And then Number 2, cloaked in a black cape and seated in the saddles of four horses of different colors, rode triumphantly into the four live news feeds.
“This can’t be happening,” said Mel. “He can’t really be in all four places at the same time. This has to be trick photography, or… or he’s totally defying the laws of physics.”
“Yes,” said her father. “This guy just loves breaking every law he can.”
Number 2 also appeared to love quantum mechanics. Decades earlier, Earth scientists had discovered that it was, indeed, possible for subatomic particles, like electrons, to be in two different locations at the exact same instant. My guess was that Number 2 had figured out how to do the same thing on a macro scale.
And I had a hunch that maybe I could pull it off, too. I’d just have to concentrate on rearranging my own matter in four different directions.
Maybe. Theoretically.
And Mel definitely could not come with me this time.
Heck, I didn’t even know if I could come with me. It’d be a brand-new, not to mention extraordinarily taxing, power.
“Don’t worry,” I said to Mel and Agent Judge. “I’ll be back in a flash.”
“Where are you going?” Mel asked. “Moscow? London?”
Her dad jumped in: “Beijing? New York?”
I just smiled at them both and said, “Yes.”