Hero academy, p.22
Hero Academy, page 22
She heaved a deep sigh and gave him the short version of the day’s events.
“So you really think this kid’s that dangerous?” he asked.
“I do, Joe, and so does the dragonfly girl, and most importantly, so does Dax.”
“You know you’re risking your career, plus kidnapping charges, and since we’re leaving the state, it’ll be federal.”
“I know,” she whispered, hands trembling.
“I’m off in two hours. Where should I come?”
Relief came with a stifled sob. “Thank you! I’ll get him to the back loading dock. It should be deserted that late.”
“I’ll let you know when I’m on the way.” He paused. “You’re sure you’re sure about this?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything. Other than how much I love you, that is.”
After hanging up, she texted her nurse friend, Rachelle, and asked her to come up. A few minutes later, the door banged shut and Rachelle emerged, holding two cups of coffee.
“I need your help,” Misty told her. “The less you know the better, but in two hours, I need you to go to Dax’s room and tell his mom he needs to go for an MRI, but bring him down to the loading dock.”
Rachelle’s eyes went wide. “What the hell?”
“Like I said, the less you know the better.”
“Uh-uh.” The nurse crossed her arms. “You tell me everything or no deal.”
Misty sighed and began the story again—realizing she’d have to come out as para for it to all make sense. Cat’s out of the bag now, she thought, hoping she wouldn’t have to come up with some kind of ridiculous code name and costume next.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016
Hays, Kansas
“The tunnels!” Chloe yelled as she woke up. The clock on the DVR said 3:47. As her brain fought its way up from deepest sleep, she understood everything. She needed to hurry.
Taking Ava’s phone off the charger, she tried to get onto Parable, but it appeared to be down. No way that could be a coincidence. She called Lindsay but got an error message, so she Googled the school’s phone number and called it. Same message. Her sense of impending doom grew.
Chloe’d promised to text her parents when she woke up, but she decided to give it a couple more hours. In preparation for the day’s energy expenditures, she slammed down three bowls of cereal, four slices of toast with peanut butter, a cup of stale coffee, and two glasses of orange juice. Taking all the portable food and drink she could manage, she took off from Anna’s back yard and headed toward the railroad tracks. By the time she could see the train, she had a plan for contacting someone at the Academy. It was a long shot, but it was the only shot she had.
* * *
“I’m sorry, Dax, but we can’t drive any faster,” Misty told him. She sat with him in the back of the ambulance, watching the monitors so they wouldn’t have any nasty surprises.
“We should be there in about six hours,” Rachelle, who’d insisted on coming with them, called from the driver’s seat. Joe slept beside her.
Misty had at first refused to let Rachelle come, but then her friend mentioned that Misty and Joe would need to sleep at some point, so a third driver—and set of hands—would be helpful. “What happens if he has another cardiac event and you’re asleep and Joe’s driving?” she asked. Finally, Misty agreed it was in her patient’s best interest to have all three of them there.
“It’s five a.m. now,” Misty said in response to Dax’s silent question. “We should be there by eleven. That’s an hour before the ceremony was supposed to start, and I have a phone number for Chloe’s roommate. We should have no trouble tracking them down.” She saw tunnels in her head and Zayden walking into a building with a balcony. “I know you can find Zayden, but we’re better off facing him with a team than all alone.”
They passed a sign announcing the exit for Hays in sixty-eight miles. “We’ll be passing the town where your mom lives pretty soon.”
Chloe sleep Mommy’s house
“Chloe went to your mom’s?” she asked. “Last night? Maybe we should go pick her up.”
Choo-choo
Misty didn’t understand what that meant, but before she had a chance to ask, she saw an aerial image of a freight train and realized it was Chloe’s perspective. The winged girl landed on the last car just as the train started to move. She smiled to herself, thinking Chloe was a brave and clever girl. The wave of emotion she got from Dax next startled her and melted her heart. He had his first crush.
* * *
Down on the platform of the rear car, Chloe huddled against the wall and tried to focus. The noise and vibration of the freight train made it hard, but after a while she became better able to tune it out. She focused on Dax and what it felt like to hear him in her mind. Before long, she heard random snippets of conversation and knew it came from him him.
Now to see if I can send. Eyes squeezed shut, she focused on Solomon. As his face took shape in her mind’s eye, she felt a moment of recognition and took it as a good sign. Either that or she was deluding herself.
Dax, she thought, tell this boy about Zayden’s plan and the tunnels. Show him the building where Zayden goes down.
The feeling of connection came to an abrupt end. She didn’t know if that was good or bad, so she could only hope for the best.
She checked the map on Ava’s phone again to make sure she had it right—even though the train veered south and she needed to go north, her best bet was to ride it south to the town of Kit Carson, then fly sixty miles northwest to Limon, then either catch one heading to Denver or fly the rest of the way.
The train moved faster than she could fly, but she almost wished it didn’t. At least flying, she’d feel like she was doing something. As she sat, she thought back over everything she’d learned and tried to piece it all together. Out of the blue, she remembered something about the mythical Chupacabra. It was a Mexican myth and the name meant “goat sucker.”
And who sucked the powers out of other paras? No, she thought. No, it couldn’t be Izzy. Could it?
* * *
Sunday, Sept. 11
Denver, Colorado
“Guys, guys!” Solomon yelled over the gaming chatter. Charlie stopped in the middle of describing a displacer beast. Sol closed his eyes and tried to assimilate all the information, but it came too fast. “This is important. Write what I say.” He rattled off the message pouring into his mind and Cat scribbled it down on the back of her character sheet. At last it ended and Sol’s eyes opened. He looked dazed and pale.
“Who’s it from?” Bridger asked.
Sol shook his head as if to clear it. “Zayden’s little brother. The one in the hospital who doesn’t talk but apparently thinks pretty damned clearly. He’s telepathic like me, except way stronger.”
“Chloe did it!” Charlie shot up. “Come on, we have to let someone know about this.”
They tried Heroes Hall, but the doors were locked and no one was visible inside. Charlie asked Cat and the other two to see who they could round up from the gym and elsewhere around campus, and he, Sol, and Bridger went looking for a security guard. It didn’t take long. Charlie and Solomon, talking over each other much of the time, told him about the message and that they needed to reach Mr. Jordan or someone else on the faculty.
“I’ll see if I can reach someone. You all head back to the dorms now,” the guard said.
They walked away, dejected. “Why do I get the feeling he’s not going to contact anyone?” Charlie asked.
“Because he thinks we’re either crazy or pulling a prank and he’s not about to lose his job over it,” Sol told him.
Bridger paused to listen, then shook his head. “Yeah, he just radioed the other guards and told them some kids were causing trouble with a crazy story.”
Back in the dorm, they went up to the fifth floor lounge, where they found Lindsay, Rhiannon, Ava, Jacob, and L.J.
“Get the others, we got a message from Zayden’s brother,” Charlie told them.
“This is it,” Lindsay said. “Miguel and Izzy’s parents got here last night, so he’s with them. Lucia, too. What’s the message?”
Sol recapped all the details he could remember.
“With no faculty and staff reachable,” Charlie said, “and the guards not taking this seriously, we’ve got to stop him ourselves.”
They stared at each other in silence as they took it in.
“Where did you say these tunnels are?” Lindsay asked.
“All over under campus and beyond, but he accesses them through the maintenance building,” Sol said.
“What are we waiting for?” Ava stood up. “Let’s go.”
“We can’t just go charging in,” Jacob said. “We need a plan.”
L.J. stood and ran for the stairs. “Be right back.”
Charlie put the paper with Dax’s message on it down on the table. “Tell me what everyone’s powers are, starting with Zayden’s.”
As they listed them for him, L.J. returned with large sheets of paper—schematics of Javelin’s tech.
“I thought you turned those in,” Jacob said.
“These are newer ones.” L.J. told him. “I made it look cooler and more modern, just for fun.” He flipped through his sketch book and added a detail here and there to different weapons and bits of armor he’d drawn before. “Damn, I wish Miguel was here! Some of this stuff will be too small.”
“What you’ve got is great,” Charlie told him. “We need communication. Lucia’s probably the best person to get Parable up, but . . . Kaci, Justin, you’re tech savvy. Head to the lab.”
“I can help, too,” L.J. said, taking off with the others.
* * *
Chloe lifted off the platform and the train moved on without her. Studying the map, she decided it would be faster to make a bee-line for the school rather than follow the train tracks’ wide arc. Comparing the terrain to satellite images to make sure she went the right direction, she took off, figuring she’d be there in forty-five minutes or less. Dr. Huxley had said he thought she would get faster as she matured. “Time to grow up, WyldWing,” she said aloud, and pushed herself to go even quicker.
* * *
“Mr. Hutson!” L.J. yelled as they walked into the room beyond the computer lab, which was filled with electronics racks. The teacher lay on the floor, gagged and bound with hands behind his back, attempting to cut the ropes on the edge of an industrial shelf.
Kaci knelt down and removed the gag while L.J. pulled out a knife sketch, manifested it, and began sawing at the ropes.
“Dude,” Justin said, “why not just carry a pocket knife?”
L.J. shrugged. “Knife laws are annoying.”
“What happened?” Kaci asked the tech teacher.
“Not sure.” Mr. Hutson stretched his jaw. “Something zapped me in the back of the head, and the next thing I knew, I woke up on the floor.”
L.J. filled him in on Zayden’s plan while cutting through the rope around his feet and Justin pried loose the knots at his wrists. “Can you get Parable up and running so we can use it to communicate?”
“Yeah, assuming we can get the backup generator running.” The rope sliced in two, Mr. Hutson stretched his long legs and stood up. He rubbed at his wrists as he walked to the generator back behind the racks. He tried to start it up, then swore as he discovered it had not only been turned off, but tampered with. “This’ll take a few minutes, but I should be able to repair the damage.”
About three minutes later, it roared to life. Electronics all around the room hummed and beeped.
Mr. Hutson sat at one computer and directed Kaci to another, rattling off instructions for getting Parable back online.
“He didn’t just shut it down,” Kaci said. “Something’s funky with the code.”
Mr. Hutson wheeled his chair over and peered at the screen. “Oh, crap. This’ll take a while.”
L.J.’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t think Zayden knew enough about computers to do that.”
Justin shrugged. “One more thing he’s been hiding?”
“Kaci, keep on restoring that code.” Mr. Hutson grabbed his cell phone from a pocket. “I’ll see if I can raise Keith. Er, Mr. Jordan.”
Justin shook his head. “Phones are out. Cell and landline. How’d he do that?”
“Maybe he disabled a tower or set up some kind of jammer or something,” Kaci said.
“Damn. Okay, I’ll jump on the code too, then,” said Mr. Hutson.
“Where is the whole faculty?” L.J. asked.
Mr. Hutson’s fingers flew over the keyboard. “They had a couple credible sightings, one of Zayden at a convenience store and one of Isabella in a booby-trapped warehouse in west Denver. So all the faculty members with useful powers are deployed, plus all the post-grads, half of Just Cause plus some heroes who came in for the ceremony, Denver PD, and the SWAT team. The rest of the faculty is probably at home.”
“Yeah,” Justin snorted. “Big mystery who called in those sightings.”
“This should be up pretty fast with two of us working, but I sure wish Miguel and Lucia were here. Luce knows this code almost as well as I do.”
“Sweet, thanks, Mr. Hutson,” L.J. turned to Kaci. “We’ll be in touch.” He and Justin headed back to the others.
* * *
“I know, I know,” Charlie said to the group once L.J. and Justin had returned, “we should never split the party, but there are too many of us and we’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so we’re going to form three teams.”
“Who named you the big boss?” Ava asked, arms folded across her chest.
Charlie shrugged his shoulders. “You want to take over, be my guest. What should we do?”
Ava balked. “I didn’t say I should be in charge, I just wondered why you were.”
“Anyone else want to do this?” Charlie asked, looking from face to face.
Bridger chuckled. “You’re the game master, man. Lead on.”
“‘Cause for the record,” Charlie continued, “I don’t really want to lead this charge, but I figure someone’s got to.”
Ava rolled her eyes. “Fine, what do you want us to do?”
“One group needs to head down to the tunnels to find Zayden and stop him.” He glanced down at the notes on his clipboard. “Ava, you can kick his ass, so you’re on Team Tunnel for sure.”
“What about me?” Jack thumped his sizable chest with an equally sizable fist and lowered his horns as if to charge.
“Tunnels, dude,” Charlie said. “Small spaces. You’re huge.” He tapped his pen on the clipboard while he thought. “Jacob, Sol, Cat, and Ondine, you’re going down there with Ava. Jacob, ‘cause you can get out of there fast to get word back to us. Cat, because you can get into small spaces and you have better dark vision and hearing than anyone else.”
Cat grinned and meowed, flexing her hands to unsheath long, curved claws that came to perfect points. She’d painted them neon green.
“Did you forget Zayden can block me?” Sol asked.
Charlie shook his head. “His brother showed you the entrance to the tunnels—you’re the only one who knows for sure how he gets in. Plus, you can send us a message if need be. It’s redundant with Jacob, but that’s okay—best to cover all our bases.” He swallowed hard. “Just in case.”
They all eyed each other, uncomfortable with what “just in case” could mean.
“And me?” Ondine asked. “What’s my role?”
“You can sense water, right?” he asked. She nodded. “Okay, I admit it’s a long shot, but maybe there’s water down there somewhere you could use to soak the explosives or put out a fire, or . . . I don’t know. It’s more likely you’ll find water down there than on the quad, anyway.”
She sighed, looking miserable. “I suppose you’ve got a point. I’m probably not much use to you guys at all.”
“You’re smart and resourceful,” Bridger said. “You’ve proved in training that you don’t need to use your powers to be helpful.”
Ondine blushed and looked down at her feet, muttering a thank you, and Bridger’s ears went red at her reaction.
“Austin and Jack—you’re Team Perimeter, and Kaci, too, once she’s done helping Mr. Hutson. Go by the lab and check on her, then circle the campus looking for any sign of fire, since you have a chance to stop it, or at least direct it in the least harmful way possible. Jack, you’re there to protect the pyros in case you run into Zayden, and the rest are on Team Search.” He looked at Lindsay, Rhiannon, L.J., Bridger, and Justin. “We’ll patrol campus and look for anything suspicious. Bridger, keep your ears open for calls for help from the other teams. If my team needs the rest of you, you’ll hear Rhiannon’s scream. Be sure to check Parable every now and then to see if Kaci and Mr. Hutson have it back up yet, too. We’ll use voice unless someone messages that they need quiet. Everyone got it?”
They all nodded and the teams split up.
* * *
“Tow-ee, Tow-ee!” Dax yelled, frantic.
“It’s okay, Dax,” Rachelle said, stroking his hand. “We’re almost there.”
“I think he’s trying to tell us Chloe’s nearby,” Joe called from the front seat.
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
He chuckled. “‘Cause she just flew over us. Damn, she’s moving fast! Of course, it doesn’t help that this motor home can’t do the speed limit.” He glared at the large vehicle in front of him, which kept perfect pace with the semi in the left lane.
Misty yawned beside him. “We’ll see her soon, Dax, try to calm down.”
