by Lan Chan
Down below, I saw Adam swing the cruiser behind the third truck and reach the outer perimeter of the flames. They double-parked and got out of the car as the firefighters turned on their hose. More sirens in the distance drew closer. A quick flick of my telepathy to a drone in the distance alerted me to the approach of the Psi-Ops.
Incoming stiffs, I told Adam and Zeke.
Five minutes later, the agents had cordoned off the area with barriers and Academy tape. The firefighters were still battling the blaze that didn’t appear to get any smaller. Several news helicopters were now flying overhead, the anchors in the passenger seats with microphones giving live updates.
Down below, Adam and Zeke were assisting with crowd control. Every once in a while, a lone person would approach them, asking questions about what was happening. Zeke was trying to dissuade one such person. Slipping back into his mind, I caught the tail end of the conversation. Through Zeke’s eyes, the yellow surrounding the man’s irises were glowing golden in the reflection of the blaze.
“You’re going to have to step back, sir,” Zeke said.
“What happened here?” The man scratched at a bleeding scab on his arm and flicked part of the sore away. Nice. “I need to get some ice cream.”
Nearby, Adam was waving another person off. The scowl on his face was dark. Was this guy blind or just hopped up on Second Sight?
“That’s not going to happen,” Zeke said. “As you can see, the ice cream parlour isn’t operational at the moment. If you’ll just stay back behind the barrier we’ll be able to get the situation under control.”
“Who did this?” the man pressed. “I have to get my ice cream. Where’s the truck? Where’s the truck?”
The man reached out and touched Zeke’s bare arm. To his credit, Zeke didn’t flinch even though he’d make contact with the hand that flicked the scab. I wouldn’t have been so calm about it. Maybe it was the buffered contact or the external input streaming through my senses that dulled the sounds in my mind. Moments passed between them as Zeke tried to calm the man down. The first few whispers popped into my head as agitation. The nanobots wanted to get home and Zeke was in the way of it. I felt the instant the man was urged into aggression and transmitted it into Zeke’s mind.
There was no need, of course. Privileged with a proper mentor, Zeke’s training was leaps and bounds above mine. Before the man could even rear back, Zeke had him pinned to the pavement, speaking quietly into his ear. “You’re not doing yourself any favours but impeding the clean-up,” Zeke said. “Now, I’m going to count to ten and then I’m going to let you up and you’re going to go home. The store is gone. Nothing we can do about it except make sure no one gets hurt.”
No truer words were spoken but the timing was the issue. As soon as the word hurt slipped over his tongue, the building beside the ice cream parlour exploded in a fireball of heat and glass. Forgetting the man, Zeke instantly threw out a telepathic barrier.
“Get out!” he screamed. There was a split second of hesitation and then the trained agents and firefighters hauled ass. Hoses snaked loose of gloved grips as the firefighters ran. Water spat in every direction, but it turned to mist and then vapour in the intensity of the heat. Through our connection, Zeke strained to contain the explosion long enough to allow everyone to run to safety. One leg buckled as he pushed his telepathy against the pressure of the explosion.
“Let it go!” Adam shouted, unable to see what Zeke was concentrating on. The idiot bystander was still whispering in my mind as he breached the barrier and ran towards the ice cream shop. Blood trailed down one side of Zeke’s nose. His teeth clenched as his mind reached out for the vital link, trying to scrounge up every last scrap of energy.
That was the problem with TK. Too many opposing forces trying to affect the object at once. Even more so than EK, because most substances at least had some conductivity to help it along. Cursing, I settled my consciousness over the link and fed him as much of my telepathy as I could.
Swearing his head off, Adam bolted through the barrier and tackled the bystander. With one concentrated telepathic hit, he knocked the man out. Lifting him in a fireman’s hold, Adam staggered through the containment zone just as Zeke’s grip on the explosion wavered.
Lily hissed through the cerebral monitor’s link. “It’s too much,” she said. It wasn’t until Zeke fell to his knees, completely weakened, that I realised what she was referring to. The pressure had been contained too long. Without his telepathy as a barrier, the heat and the shockwave rolled through the area like thunder. Adam dumped his cargo and tried to go back for Zeke, but the firefighters grabbed him, knowing there would be no point.
Zeke’s resolve vibrated through the vital link. I felt the sad caress of his telepathy over mine and knew he didn’t expect to get out of this alive. A million tiny whispers in my mind screamed their despair. Lights flickered all around me. I heard Lily tapping at her keyboard.
“That’s all I can give you.”
My mind reacted immediately. Metal groaned as all around Zeke, drones plummeted from the air. Broken car bodies screeched forward as the wave hit, spitting glass and construction debris like a storm. My vision cut in and out as the connection lost integrity. Yellow veins of electricity coursed across my eyes.
“Contain it!” Lily yelled at me. “You’ll blow up the equipment.”
But I hardly recognised her voice. My focus pinpointed to the metre square block of bitumen where Zeke’s body lay curled in on itself. His head lolled to the left, eyes blank, blood still seeping from his nose. The first drone I threw in front of him caught the shard of glass that sliced through it like a transparent sword. The drone fell in two halves. A symphony of metallic raindrops peppered the air as the car bodies converged between Zeke and the explosion.
It was all over in a matter of seconds, but in my mind, hours passed. The green energy in the vital link dulled until it only striped against the gold. My telepathy stuttered, on the verge of collapse. The last thing I remembered was a pair of small hands attempting to lift the cerebral monitor off my head. My eyes rolled back and the world went dark.
32
Raised voices pulled me from my sleep. I rolled over in bed and stuffed the pillow over it but the sound just wouldn’t abate. Only after several minutes of the same droning voices yelling over the top of each other did I realise someone was watching TV down the hall. What the ever flipping hell?
It took a few minutes to notice that I did know the voice and there was a reason why it annoyed the crap out of me. It was the booming, overly dramatic tones of the League master of ceremonies as he introduced a match. Bloody Zeke and the boys must have been watching a fight again.
My eyes snapped open at the thought of him. Zeke. The memories returned in a torrent of anguish that made me jar my little toe on the door as I swung it open.
“Sonofabitch!” I screamed. Hobbling, I tried to limp as quickly as I could to his room.
Before I’d even taken a few steps, my mind opened up. My thoughts moved directly to the vital link and I heaved an unrestrained sigh when I saw it. Gold and green encased in each other, glowing perfectly steady.
Hey, Sparks.
There was no need to throw open his door because it was gaping wide, the TV on full blast. I wasn’t the only visitor, but Zeke smiled at me like I was the only one who mattered.
Taking two steps into his room, I practically dove onto his bed.
“What the hell was that?” I shouted at him. “You almost died!”
Wanting very much to pick up the spare pillow and smash it over his head, I gritted my teeth to stop the lump in my throat turning to tears. Somebody behind me hooked an arm around my chest.
“All right,” Adam said. “Give him some space. You’re going to rip his IV out.”
I didn’t understand a word he was saying as I scratched at the arm he used to restrain me. It was like trying to bend metal. When the heck did he get this strong? When my breath became ragged from that simpl
e exertion, I realised it was me who was weak. On cue, my stomach rumbled.
I fell into a heap on the base of Zeke’s bed and watched his lopsided smile turn into a chuckle. “I’ll get you something to eat,” Bianca said.
Adam patted me on the back and went to reattach the IV that I had inadvertently ripped from Zeke’s arm. My head was still fuzzy but I had enough clarity to make out the numerous wounds to his arms and face. One cut under his right eye was going to scar. His left bicep was also bandaged and his face was pale to the point of almost green.
Reaching out, I placed a hand on his blanket-covered knee. Zeke took it and laced his fingers in mine. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to take a shaky breath. He was alive. Only then did the whispers in my mind quieten into their usual homeostatic pattern.
Bianca returned shortly after with a big bowl of spaghetti with her mum’s special sauce. I ate one-handed, still clutching Zeke with the other.
“Where are Rich and Oz?” Peering around the room, I tried to get a handle on how long it had been.
“Twelve hours,” Adam said, knowing the meaning behind my jerky head movements.
“Only twelve?” The fork stopped midway through my mouth. “Why aren’t you in the hospital?”
“They’re overcrowded,” Zeke said. “As soon as I regained consciousness they moved me back here.”
“You should be asleep.”
“I have a match to watch.”
He grinned at the way my eyes narrowed. “Relax. I just woke up too.”
“The people are rioting,” Bianca said. “Buildings everywhere are being torched.”
“Did the Psi-Ops implement curfew?”
“They had to.”
“What about Spectra?”
“No sightings,” Adam said. “Though they’re suspecting that what happened at the ice-cream store might be her work.”
“Oh great,” I said. “Now she’s getting credit for what I do.”
“How the hell did you do that, by the way?” Zeke said.
“Ask Lily. It’s her invention. Where is she?”
Bianca grinned. “Not speaking to you. You busted up the lab pretty good. She’s still cleaning up.”
“Aww, man. It wasn’t my fault!”
Bianca shrugged.
“Any word from the Kings?” I asked her.
“Nope. But somebody tried to take a shot at Collins, so they’re active. The more I think about it, the more this new Spectra is giving me the shits. The only time she shows herself is when there’s Second Sight involved. She doesn’t give a crap that the city’s burning and it’s because of her.”
I swallowed the last of the meal wishing there was more. Zeke eyed me speculatively, half his attention on the TV screen beside his bed. “Don’t even think about it.”
“It could work,” I said.
“What could work?” Adam asked.
“She thinks she can turn up and be a substitute.”
Bianca crossed her arms over her chest. “No way. They’ll know it’s not her.”
“But if I can stop the destruction…”
“How?” Zeke wanted to know. “By giving yourself over to the Kings? They’re not going to accept anything but death. Not at this point, with the Shadowman’s reputation on the line. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Especially not in the state you’re in,” Adam said.
“So, what?” I asked. “We just sit here and wait out the storm? What if the city is destroyed by then?”
“That’s not our call to make.” Bianca’s brows furrowed and she started picking at her nails in a gesture that made me think she was trying to convince herself as much as me.
“What’s been hit?” I asked, thinking of Mr. Hikari.
“Mostly the supermarkets and stores that sell anything resembling weapons.”
I wrapped my arms around my knees and sighed. “I didn’t think it would go this far. Drugs have never affected the city this badly.”
“It’s not the drugs,” Bianca said. “Any bottle under the kitchen sink can give you a high. It’s the esper potential. They want to be like us so much they’re willing to burn the city down for it.”
“This is all my fault.”
Bianca squeezed my arm. “No, it’s not. It’s the fault of whoever put the nanobots there in the first place, and it’s the fault of whoever is turning it into a drug. Don’t do that to yourself.”
As the news rolled in for the rest of the day, it was hard not to feel a little responsible. More and more buildings were being looted. Most of the legitimate stores in City Square had been shut and gangs were now roaming the streets after dark, breaking into shops and terrorizing the city. Normally it wouldn’t be tolerated, but the Kings were turning a blind eye.
Just before dinner time, the perimeter monitor beeped. “They’re home,” Adam said, and then, “What the hell?”
We crowded around the video link in the kitchen and my heart stopped. Trailing behind Rich’s cruiser were two Psi-Ops vans. Not the nondescript grey vans they used on stakeouts but black vans with their shield insignia on them.
The back door slid open and Lily stalked into the room. “We have company.”
Although not as unreasonable as Abigail, Lily had no love for the Psi-Ops. Not least because without Hyper, she would be their lab rat too. “Why would Richard bring them here?”
Her guess was as good as ours. “I guess we’ll find out,” I said.
Once he was within reach, Oz’s telepathy called out to us. Goosebumps broke out all over my arms at his message.
They’re taking extreme measures, he sent. They want blood samples from anyone whose blood could be the source of Second Sight.
A heavy thump sounded in the hallway as half a dozen figures became visible striding on the path towards us. Zeke appeared in the kitchen, his eyes wide with alarm.
“Make then go away, Bianca,” Lily said.
Shoulders squared, it looked like Bianca had every intention of doing exactly that. Her mental signature rattled with rage. As the Psi-Ops agents drew closer, that rage turned to alarm. We all felt it. The throb of anti-psi cuffs.
Oz’s features were drawn tight when they entered the mansion. Their clomping feet were like a death knell. Zeke settled down beside me on the couch, the arm he wrapped around my shoulders still bandaged.
It’s too bad transmutation isn’t an ability, I thought to his mind alone. The vital link sparked and his neon-green energy dulled until it became the colour of pine needles. The wine glass Bianca set down rattled.
Calm down, Adam thought to him. Your agitation isn’t going to help her. Said the guy who suddenly had a death grip on my shoulder that I had to squirm out of. Rich followed Oz into the room with Flynn, Collins and two other agents in tow.
“Good evening,” Flynn said.
Lily was the only one who answered. “Hello, Agent Flynn.”
Flynn’s eyes tracked Oz as the other man walked to sit at the dining table next to Bianca. She reached out automatically and took his hand. I wondered if it was more than a comforting gesture. Now just wasn’t the time for this.
“As you all know, the situation in the city has reached critical mass. We’ve got very little time in order to find the source of Second Sight—”
“I thought you already did,” Lily interrupted.
“We managed to shut down an operation site, but it appears there was more than one division.”
“Then your agents died for nothing,” Lily continued. She was too far away near the island bench for someone to shut her up with a physical cue. If Flynn was perturbed by being questioned by a teenager, he didn’t let it show.
“Be that as it may, our search has led us to believe the origin of Second Sight might be from a sample of blood belonging to an esper. As you can imagine, someone like that can’t be allowed to remain at large.”
“Those aren’t very concrete assumptions,” Lily continued to barge on. “I’m assuming you’d like to take samples of
their blood. Don’t you think it would be better served to wait for a confirmed hypothesis before taking such drastic measures?”
What the hell had gotten into her? Rich was obviously thinking along the same lines because he cleared his throat. She looked at him, her expression blank of emotion. Not that she was usually expressive, but at least she normally stared at his chin or his nose and not square in the face and completely unblinking.
This time Flynn grinned. “Not just their blood. Yours too.”
“I’m not an esper.”
“No. But you’re not exactly typical either. You understand we have to take all precautions.”
“I’m a minor,” Lily countered. “So are Willow and Ezekiel. You can’t take anything from us without parental consent.”
“That’s only true of civilians,” Collins interjected. As Hyper agents, you are directed to cooperate fully with our investigation.”
“And if we refuse?” Bianca asked.
“There is no refusal.” Flynn produced a piece of paper from his suit jacket and passed it to her. My stomach dropped out from underneath me at the Ministerial Mandate compelling us to do whatever they asked. It didn’t strike me as a coincidence that Senator Collins was the one who signed it.
Bianca’s left eye twitched. “So you’ve failed in every other aspect of the investigation and now you’re going to impede on our civil liberties.” Beside her, Oz tensed. Flynn and the agents did the same.
Never before had the itch in the back of my head been so uncomfortable. Bianca’s annoyance bled into the psychic link the team used to communicate with each other. In Collins’s face, she saw the death of her mentor. Were it not for the uniform, I thought Bianca might have tried to lash out at her.