Empowered, p.18
Empowered, page 18
“What if Support is out there?”
“Alex wouldn’t betray us.” I clenched my jaw. “You know that.”
Her face was ominous. “I wasn’t thinking of Alex. I was thinking of Harris. I never trusted that little weasel.”
I felt a pang in my chest. Little weasel is what we used to call Gus. “We have to find them,” I said, and began pacing.
She jerked her head toward the computer room. “Come on, let’s get back to the computer room, and see what we can see on the monitors.” She strode over to the weapons rack, and grabbed a stun rifle, slung it over her shoulder, then grabbed another one. “Take this last one.”
I thought I was paranoid. “Harris isn’t Gus,” I said quietly, but took the last rifle from her hand.
“No, he’s not. Gus was truer blue than we thought.”
Ice settled in the pit of my stomach. “Alex can take care of himself,” I said, but it sounded lame even to me. If someone had been blindsided, it had to have been Harris.
We hoofed it back to the computer room. I fidgeted all the way through the bunker, and kept looking in corners and doorways, hoping Alex would pop up like a miracle.
But he didn’t. The place was dead quiet. We’d put Goldin’s body in the freezer next to the one holding Simon. The place was rapidly becoming a morgue.
“You figure out how this set up works?” I asked Keisha.
“Yeah. Pretty basic.”
“Whoa, what’s this about it being basic?” I asked, my eyes wide. “Since when did you become an expert on security and surveillance systems?”
She bent over a keyboard, scanning the monitor as she pressed keys. A grid of camera views popped up. I’d seen Alex do that.
“You’re too busy dealing with your flower power,” she said, concentrating on the views. “Some of us have to pay attention to security.”
“I’ve never seen you use a system like this.”
She shrugged, typing away. “I used to work in a place like this, early on in the Scourge, back when they had more people, before the Mojave battle.” She got quiet.
Shit. Keisha and I had been friends for going on two years, and yet there were still things about her I had no clue about.
Same would be true for Alex. For Harris. And all the Imbued. Damn this constant go-go-go. I never had time to think about anything other than not being killed or captured by the supposed good guys.
A new camera view popped up. Keisha grinned at the monitor.
“Haven’t seen that before,” I said.
“No kidding. Simon had it coded. Your boyfriend wouldn’t have had a clue about it. Scourge had it locked down and hidden. You had to know the codes.”
The new camera view must be from a camera hidden on a pole outside the red building. It was like looking through the eyes of a circling hawk.
It was still dark outside. A figure slipped through the shadows beneath building awnings, heading back this way. The figure disappeared into the red building.
“Damn, he’s quick,” Keisha muttered. She tapped the keys and the camera view switched to infra-red inside the dark warehouse.
The figure was wearing a black jumpsuit, the kind that must be for stealth, because the IR camera only showed a dark silhouette. Couldn’t even really tell how tall he was. He seemed big, certainly bigger than Harris, and even bigger than Alex’s six foot two, my height.
“Support?” I asked Keisha.
She peered at the screen. “You tell me. You worked for them.”
She said it quietly, but the words slapped hard.
I gritted my teeth. She had a right to be bitchy about that.
“They usually travel in teams, two, three, or even a squad of six.” That was the impression I’d had. Problem was, I wasn’t invited to the Support party. “I was the infiltrator, remember?” I groused.
“In other words, a mushroom.” She laughed. “Sorry. Shit.” The figure had disappeared from the IR.
“He knows exactly where to go.”
Maybe I misjudged the scale, and it was Alex. Then we shouldn’t be planning an ambush. Except better safe than sorry. He’d tell me something like that.
I hefted my stun rifle. “I’ll bet you a thousand dollars he’s headed right here.”
She snorted. “No shit.”
And I had a feeling he knew the entrance codes.
“Let’s meet whoever this is in the entryway,” I said.
We sprinted back through the corridors to the supply room.
No way were we going to be caught flat-footed.
18
Keisha and I hunkered down behind supply cabinets and pointed our stun rifles at the hatch to the gauntlet room. The door hissed open and a tall figure emerged, dressed in a black jumpsuit. My finger tightened on the stun rifle’s firing stud. The light fell on his face and my heart rose. It was Alex.
I jumped up like an idiot, ignoring Keisha’s hissed warning.
He smiled when he saw me.
I rushed him. His eyes widened. I grabbed him in a bear hug, stun rifle falling from my hands and clattering against the floor.
“Jesus,” Keisha groused behind me. “Way to lose it.” I ignored her and held Alex tight against me.
“Good to see you, too, Mat,” he said. I kissed him. He froze, then kissed me back, but not as fiercely. I pulled away.
“Where the hell were you?” I said, swatting his arm.
Keisha rose up from where she’d been hiding, a big grin on her face.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t sleep, decided to take a walk. I ran into him here, loading up on gear. He fired a stun pistol at me. I ducked down behind that supply cabinet.” He pointed at the one Keisha still beside.
I looked back at Alex. “Where did he get the stun pistol from? The pistol locker in the armory’s been empty. Did he take yours.”
“No way.” Alex shrugged. “He must have found one. Because he had one.”
He rubbed the back of his neck again, moving stiffly.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, looking closely at him.
“Harris wounded me with his power, then exited through the hatch. I had to take a moment to patch myself. Then I went after him.”
“Why the hell didn’t you come back here and get us?” Keisha demanded, her face dark with fury.
Alex shrugged. “I didn’t want him to get away.”
“You didn’t take a stun rifle,” I said.
“I had my stun pistol. Changed into black and went after him.”
“So, what happened?” I asked.
“I traced him to a building two blocks from this location.”
I shook my head. “How?”
He smiled faintly. “Being a Support agent did give me some practice.”
I laughed. “I’m an idiot. Of course, it did. So, where is Harris now?”
Alex’s gaze didn’t waver. “Dead.”
Keisha and I both exhaled sharply.
“He was at a portable comm set. He’d taken one from the supply room. He was in communication with someone when I found him. I stunned him once, but it didn’t knock him out.” He paused, looked me in the eye. Alex never flinched. “I stunned him a second time, then a third. It must have stopped his heart. I couldn’t revive him. So, I destroyed the set, and hid his body.” He looked down at his hands. “He shouldn’t have had to die.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I don’t understand. What made him do that?”
“Didn’t seem like the type at all,” Keisha said.
Alex nodded. “I don’t get why he’d do that, now. Maybe he was afraid. Maybe this change he went through—perhaps that affected his mind.”
I shook my head. “Maybe.”
“I’m sorry, Mat,” Keisha said. “I should have stuck with him.”
“You didn’t know.” I turned back to Alex. “You said you heard him communicating with someone?”
Alex nodded. “Support. I think he was trying to turn us in.
My heart sank. “Damn.”
Keisha jerked. “Shit! Then what are we doing standing around here? Let’s get to the node.”
I nodded. “Yeah, we need to move. Let’s grab the data and hit the Dark-Net.”
Alex shook his head. “No.”
“What do you mean, no?” Keisha’s jaw was tight. “I’m not letting those fucks capture me. You both don’t want to stick around either.”
“The Dark-Net is unreliable.” Alex sighed.
“Mat’s stabilized it!” Keisha insisted.
Alex had a point. “But what if we are delayed while inside again?” I pointed out. I ground my teeth. I hated that possibility. “Do you have another option?” I asked him.
He nodded. “I do.”
Keisha crossed her arms. “We need to get back to Australia and hook up with the others. The Dark-Net will let us do that.”
“We can’t jeopardize them,” he said, voice firm. “Trust me, we do have another option. They need to be kept safe. And executing our plan requires speed.”
“So, what’s this other option?” I asked him.
He smiled, that cocky, charming thousand-watt grin of his. “We take a plane.”
I laughed. “You just happen to have one on tap?”
“Look, it wasn’t an asset we could easily get to before,” he said. “It’s up in B.C., in a secure hangar. I was reminded of it yesterday evening when I was going over intel.”
I cocked my head. “And you just mention this now?”
“Sorry, I didn’t remember it until now.”
“Now is different?” I asked him, hands on my hips.
“I’m not perfect a hundred percent of the time,” he dead-panned, then grinned. “Just ninety nine percent of the time.”
My heart lifted. “We meet up with Bey,” I said.
“Persia is compromised,” Alex pointed out.
“Central Asia. Bey’s people operate there.”
He shook his head. “Too risky.”
“Okay, smart guy, then where do we go in this mystery plane of yours?” I asked, forcing a smile on my face to lighten the mood.
“Africa,” he said, tone matter-of-fact.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Keisha said.
“No,” he replied, and flashed his thousand-watt grin.
“Your grin is cute, but it’s also as annoying as hell, sometimes,” Keisha grumbled.
He got serious. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but we need to strike for RAMPART control now.”
Keisha raised a hand. “Whoa, hold on there. Not so fast. We need to think this through.” She looked at me. “What do you think?”
I unkinked my neck. “I talked with Goldin about this before he died. We have to go to RAMPART control and shut down the system. It’s killing the world.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but okay, so we hit RAMPART,” Keisha said. “Just the three of us. That screams suicide, you know that?” She snapped her fingers. “We just going to waltz in there and take over a secret complex? All by ourselves?”
“That’s exactly what we are going to do,” he said.
My chest felt heavy. “None of this is easy.
She snorted. “This is a million miles from easy.” She glared at us. “You’re both bat-shit crazy, you know that?”
I looked at Alex and raised my eyebrow. “You must have more than that to your plan.”
He nodded. “First all, it won’t just be the three of us. I had time to think about it.
I’ve got contacts that will help.”
“What contacts?” Keisha demanded.
He smiled, not the cocky grin, just the relaxed, I got-this-Alex-special smile. “We’re going to meet up with reinforcements in Africa on our way to Antarctica.”
“Who are these reinforcements?” she asked.
“Some Empowered for hire I know, plus Normals to provide extra muscle.”
Keisha narrowed her eyes at him. “You are just full of surprises this morning, you know that? That really enough to force the entrance?”
He smiled. “We aren’t forcing the entrance.” He tapped his head. “The data I extracted, gave me access codes and electronic I.D.s We can come in as members of this hidden secrecy faction.”
Keisha opened her mouth to argue, but he raised a hand. “We’ll have blue jumpsuits for the normal, with proper I.D., comms, and black for Support for our Normal help.”
“Where’d you get all this?” she demanded.
“The data, remember.”
“Damn, there’s a lot in that data,” she grumbled.
Things were moving damn fast. But what else could we do? We didn’t really have a choice. This was a desperation play if there ever was one.
I needed Ella. I wanted her in on this. But I had no way of reaching her. It was a one-way street. I closed my eyes for an instant. Come on Ella, I said in my mind. I need you. Stupid, but I wanted my sister here, wanted her to know what we were about to do.
I took a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”
“Stupid crazy,” Keisha muttered. “Fuck it. I’m in, too.”
Alex nodded. “The necessary thing is usually the hardest thing,” he said.
“Just so long as you don’t keep spouting that sort of shit at us,” Keisha replied.
“Promise,” Alex said, suppressing a smile. He dashed off to change into “more fitting” clothes.
“I should have my head examined for going along with this,” Keisha said.
“We all should,” I said. “How is that different than any other crazy thing we do.”
She gave me a sour look. “I hate it when you are right.”
The surprises hadn’t ended.
Turns out there was a second, even more super-secret exit from the death bunker.
A tunnel behind a hidden panel in the interrogation chamber that ran for what felt like miles in the dark.
We tramped through it, Alex in the lead with a penlight to light the way, then me, and Keisha in back. “Where the hell did this come from?” Keisha asked for the tenth time. I ignored her. I’d already reminded her at least three times that the Scourge loved keeping secrets, too. Instead, I reached out with my special sense to feel the plant life in the earth around us. Mostly seeds and roots of weeds and crabgrass above us, where the city was. The penlight beam stopped moving forward and shone on a dirt-encrusted steel door. Alex pulled at the handle. It didn’t budge.
He swore under his breath, fumbled around along the edges. “Must be a secret catch here.”
“How the hell does he know?” Keisha whispered behind me.
I shrugged. “Benefits of a Support background.” No one laughed. Alex continued running his finger along the earth around the door, coming down to the ground.
“Found it!” His fingers pressed against the earth at the base of the door.
There was faint snick sound.
“Floor lock? Who puts a lock in the floor?” Keisha asked.
“Last place you’d look,” I said.
Alex opened the door a crack and peered through.
“Clear,” he said, sounding very military. “Close your eyes.” The door scraped the earth. “Okay, let’s go.” I shielded my eyes and blinked furiously. Light flooded into the tunnel from outside. A hundred yards away, water sloshed against the shoreline. Railroad tracks ran outside the door. We were beneath an overpass.
“Good place for a secret door,” I said to Alex, but he was all business, stepping out fast and moving along the wall beneath the overpass. I followed, Keisha right behind me. The door swung shut behind, disappearing into the grimy wall.
The sun had come up. Alex wore faded jeans, work boots, a flannel shirt and an old jacket. All of us carried backpacks with protein bars, water, other supplies, but we looked like a trio of homeless people.
We went to the Trailways station, and caught a bus for Blaine, a few miles south of the Canadian border. Sitting beside Alex on the ride north, I tried to talk to him, but he was lost in thought. I ground my teeth. “Hey,” I said.
He blinked, looked at me. “Thinking,” he said. “Sorry.”
I rubbed his shoulder. He smiled, but I could tell he wasn’t really there.
“I’ll let you think,” I said, through clenched teeth. Alex didn’t notice.
I glanced over at Keisha. She sat across the aisle, arms folded, head down, sleeping. That was smart. But I couldn’t sleep. I sat there and stared out the window.
The bus crawled north. Stopped at Federal Way, and then in downtown Seattle. A Hero Council blimp hung in the sky over Capitol Hill. I kept waiting for black vans to surround the bus, or for blue jump-suited superheroes to drop down on us, while we waited for the bus to start north again.
This was the craziest thing I’d ever done. Going after the heart of this RAMPART conspiracy. My mother was there, at the center of it all. I wanted to head straight there, but Alex had a point about getting reinforcements. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d wound up working with people I didn’t know. I shook my head. More like a regular thing.
Things had happened so fast, I’d pushed the thought of mom from my mind, but she was back now in my thoughts.
She controlled RAMPART. She channeled the Gaia Force. Summoned up dragons and other monsters to protect it. Did she even know I lived?
I hoped she was a virtual prisoner like Goldin had been, but there was no way for me to tell. We still had to go over the plans—Alex said he’d think about them on the trip to Canada, which left me sitting here beside him, starring out the window. I looked across the aisle at Keisha. She still slept.
My skin began to tingle. I looked out the window past Keisha.
Ella stood next to the entrance to the bus station past Keisha’s side of the bus, staring back at me. She wore a gray hoody over a pink dress and tennis shoes, and her black hair was under an orange knitted cap.
My heart raced. Alex was still lost in his thoughts.
I got up and slipped out of the bus, blood pounding. I fought to keep myself from running.
As I reached her, she turned and pulled me away from the door, beside a rhododendron bush beneath a high window. A bumble bee buzzed past me and hovered over a flower. The bush buzzed a happy tune in my mind, echoing the bee. It trembled with excitement. My sense was sharper than it had ever been.
