“What the f—” Frank leaps past me, lays a single hand on the kinetic manipulator and then flings back to where he first appeared, vanishing in a swirl of air that appears like a portal of water in the middle of my lab. Then he’s gone along with my tech. “Epic, red alert, get everyone to a minimum safe distance. Call the team, let them know what’s happening. Can we evacuate in time?”
Maybe. Security is doing an exceptional job. Amelia, you need to suit up and leave right now. I am transferring myself and Milton to our secret servers. I will save as much of your tech as I can in Q-space. But you must go right now.
“You don’t have to tell me twice.”
I just did.
“Where’s Carlos?” I ask him, my mind swirling with the possibilities of what Frank said a few seconds before.
He is s assisting in the rescue of a ferry in Thailand. Shall I notify him?
What do I do? Is it the ferry that hurts him, or coming here? “It’s your call, buddy. I can’t make that decision; no matter what I do I could play into Frank’s hands and I won’t play that game.”
I roll over to the wall where the chair is, slip in and take one last look around my lab. Dangit, I like this one. I don’t know how anyone managed to hack my satellite, since they would, in essence, also have to hack Epic to do so... and that is impossible, isn’t it? Now the question is, did Frank give someone knowledge that allowed them to hack it, or did he only see the event coming and time his theft to coincide? So many questions.
“Epic, initiate,” I say once I’m fully seated.
Thirty seconds later I’m blasting out of the tunnel into the sky.
“Amelia,” Kate says over the team comms. “I’m here. I’ve got Teddy’s wife to safety and I’m working on the medical staff.”
Epic puts a timer on my HUD, counting down to impact. In about thirty seconds we’re going to see the arrow coming down in a streak of fire.
“Tony, where are you?” I ask Fleet.
“Working... on... the... grounds... staff...” Each time he speaks it’s after he’s dropped another person more than a mile away.
This is precisely why I built in the middle of nowhere. “Don’t forget the security staff. Epic, can you evacuate the maintenance crew out through the Emjets?”
The second Spire isn’t as tall as the first, but it is full of mechanical equipment for both the jets and everything else the team uses.
On it.
A beam of light shoots past me as Lux flies through the air so fast the molecules ignite behind her. She zooms down to the ground level, picking up several people as she slows down, then turns and accelerates to our predetermined rally point. We never expected to use it for this—only for earthquakes or fires.
“Medical staff is with Teddy, working on the janitors,” Kate says to me.
A deafening roar fills the air. I look up and realize we’re not going to get everyone out. The arrow burns through the air, lighting up the sky even under the noonday sun. “Everyone out, now! Thirty seconds to impact.”
“We still have people in there,” Fleet yells. I see a trail of dust leading back to the building.
“Fleet, there’s no time.”
Another glint of light falls past me and for a second I think it’s Lux, but no, I make out the spear as it hits the landing pad on the spire. A second later The Protector lands in a crouch next to his spear.
“Carlos, what are you doing?” I yell over the team frequency.
I’m a few hundred feet above him but I can see him perfectly with my HUD enhancing his features.
“My job,” he says. He picks the spear up and lifts it back, hurling it forward and up at the Arrow. A second later, as if pulled by an invisible tether, he leaps forward. He curls up behind his circular shield bracing it on his shoulder as the magic of the spear throws him bodily toward certain doom.
I know exactly how much energy is in the weapon—I created it. I scream as Carlos vanishes from sight. The light of the falling Arrow burning through the sky eclipses my friend.
The Emdrive whines as I kick it into high gear, chasing after him. Maybe I can hit him and divert his trajectory enough to—
Blinding yellow light fills the sky. An explosion of heat and sound expands in a near perfect circle as the arrow detonates a half mile from the surface. The force of the blast hits, knocking me out of the sky and sending me tumbling to the ground amid an earful of alarms.
160
For the first time in a long time, I’m not the one lying in the hospital bed; I wish it was me. I’ve grown so used to Carlos being this indestructible giant as The Protector, that I almost forgot he can be killed. I imagine Sydney thought the same thing. The machines beep softly as we watch his chest rise and fall, as if each time he breathes in, we think it might be the last.
“Come on, Carlos,” I whisper to him. “You can do this.”
Kate is the only other person in the room with me. She sits silently on the other side of the bed from me, holding his left hand while I hold his right. Carlos, maybe even more than Kate, is my support structure. Just knowing he’s out there keeps me in going. Seeing him like this...
Teddy suggested not taking his armor off of him while he recovers. It can’t be pleasant for Carlos, lying there in his bronze era armor and helmet, his shield and spear are leaned against the wall beside him. Of course, he’s unconscious so I guess he doesn’t feel much of anything.
“Teddy thinks he’ll make it, Amelia. He’s a smart guy so if he says he will, he will.”
I shrug. “Smart people aren’t the end all, be all. We make mistakes... so many mistakes.” I drop my head into my hands and press my palms against my eyes, trying really hard to keep my mind right. A soft hand rests on the nape of my neck as Kate drags a chair to sit next to me. The gentle massage of her fingers combined with her powers eases a lot of the tension.
“Carlos loves what he does. I know that,” she says to me in a whisper.
“It’s not that. It’s just... Luke, Tempus, The Armory, the list goes on and I have no idea how to stop any of them. It’s like... I came back to Earth and the world has gone crazy. I spent most of my life preparing to find my parents while keeping my tech safe. I find my parents, but now my tech is out there. Kate, Tempus said the government had built a prototype ZPFM. Do you understand the devastation unlimited power could cause in the wrong hands? It would make a nuke look like a kid’s firecracker. And now... Tempus has one, the government has one, the Armory has five...”
She’s silent for a moment, her fingers working their magic on my shoulders. Even if she wasn’t using her powers on me I’d appreciate the human touch. Something, anything to tell me I’m not alone in this.
“I know, Amelia, I know. I’m sorry hon. I know this has to be hard. You don’t have to do this alone. I will be by your side every step of the way.” She gives me a little smile and her green eyes sparkle in a way that I wish mine did.
“My optimistic Kate,” I say to her.
“Yes, I am. No one ever achieved anything complaining about how impossible things are. Where do you want to start?”
I had a list of things but there was only one real possibility. “Until I have some way to stop the Gem— or whatever is in the gem—from hurting Luke, looking for him is on hold.”
“Right,” she says with a nod. “No point finding him if we have no way to neutralize the hold it has on him. What’s next?”
“Tempus is a time traveler. I mean a legit one. I’m not sure what I can do that he can’t see coming. He’s not omnipotent, though. I’d love it if he’d sit down with me for five minutes and talk about temporal mechanics,” I say with a smile. “But I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing him again.”
Kate shakes her head and slaps me gently on the back of the head. “Leave it to you to want a chat with the villain about how his powers work.”
I chuckle. The few minutes I spent with Frank Parker were pretty interesting. The little bits he let drop about how his powers wo
rk were impressive. However, he isn’t the one I can deal with right now. “Of the problems I have right now, that leaves my tech being out there, and the Armory.”
Kate grimaces. I know the feeling. The last time I dealt with them they beat me within an inch of my life. If it wasn’t for Carlos... I’d be a speared fish.
“Okay, what do we do?”
Carlos stirs, moaning for a moment. We both freeze, waiting to see if he wakes up. When he doesn’t, Kate motions for us to leave. Outside the door, Tony and Lux sit in adjacent chairs, holding hands and whispering to each other.
“Any change?” Fleet asks. His Boston accent is just as strong today as it was when I met him.
I shake my head. He and Lux glance at each other, communicating almost silently. She nods her head toward us and Tony speaks up. “We want to help with whatever you need, Amelia.”
“Thank you, Tony, I appreciate that. I’ll talk to Milton and see what your schedule is like. If I can free it up and I have something for you to do, I’ll let you know.”
“I meant what I said Amelia Lockheart,” Lux says, standing as she speaks and bowing to me. “You are the savior of my people.”
I open my mouth to speak, but what could I possibly say to that? Thank you? Instead, I take her hand and clasp it with a smile.
She and Tony head out, stopping to peek in on Carlos before they walk to the elevator.
“Kate, follow me,” I tell her after the couple disappears behind sliding doors. The private lift takes me right to my apartment, which feels a lot more lonely without Luke stopping in for dinner or to hassle me for spending so much time in my lab.
One pull on the right book later, and we’re surrounded by computers and spare parts. Tempus took the kinetic manipulator I was working on, but he’ll be disappointed when it doesn’t work—which almost guarantees we’ll see him again. Since I can wait for him to come to me, that just leaves my tech being out there and Armory.
“Epic, update on Artemis and Project Nomad?” I ask my AI.
“Project Nomad?” Kate asks with a raised brow.
“Before whoever hacked my satellite became a priority I—”
Ahem. You?
I shake my head with a chuckle. “We created a worm, similar to Shai-hulud. You remember, the worm I used to infiltrate Cat-7 and take them down a byte at a time.”
She nods. “So, this Nomad is a worm? What’s it trying to infiltrate?”
I wheel around to my central computer, which is really my primary theoretical and programming workstation. Each of the other five workstations handles a different aspect of my research. “Pretty much everywhere. After the attempted coup, the government wised up to the danger Epic posed. They beefed up security on their sensitive areas. Even so, it’s not enough to stop him. The only real way to stop him is to keep their intelligence offline. However, for anything to be useful, eventually it has to be exposed to the Internet. Hence, Nomad. He’s spent the last few days infiltrating everywhere. He’s harmless and invisible, distributed over every piece of data, like a real-life virus he’s spreading with contact. We’re at...” I punch a few keys to bring up the saturation levels. “Sixty percent, not bad.”
“Sixty percent of what?” Kate asks.
“Haven’t you been listening? Of computers,” I tell her.
“Wait... sixty percent... of computers where?”
“Everywhere. The world. Once we’re at one-hundred percent he can start looking for any signs of my tech and once he does...”
“Triple word score?” She asks?
I snort, covering my face to hide my embarrassment. I hate snorting. “Then I will know who took my stuff. I can track them down while Epic deletes every trace of my tech on every computer, everywhere.”
That is the plan, anyway. No plan survives contact with the enemy.
“What enemy?” Kate asks. She walks around the lab, running her hands along the monitors and frowning when they come back dusty. “You need to clean this place, Amelia. Or have the staff come in here. I know you like to protect it, but this isn’t healthy.”
I don’t even know how to respond to that, so I don’t. “The enemy he is referring to is whoever built those giant robots like the one we fought in Buenos Aires. I believe they are the same person who designed the Armory’s suits as well as the person responsible for hacking Artemis.”
“I thought Tempus hacked the satellite?”
“Frank? No. I think he saw it happen in the future and used it to his advantage. No, the person who hacked my satellite has to be the same person who is exploiting my tech. Not the US Government or whoever else has it, but someone capable of analyzing my designs and recreating them.”
Or cloning them, as the case may be. The armor fragment we recovered from Rafael’s robot had an identical molecular matrix to Amelia’s MK III suit. Not similar, the same. Which is why I have been scouring the source code of Artemis, looking for the intrusion. Once I find it, I can trace it back to the source and send in the team to take him down.
“But who is he?” Kate asks.
“I have no idea, but... we will soon.”
161
Dinner with my parents is a bit of a luxury. Worry about Carlos nags at me but I needed to do this. They still live in Seattle, not at the hospital, though. They liked the city enough they decided to stay after Doctor Grace declared she’d done everything medically possible to restore their memories. Sadly, they haven’t recovered their memories, but Dr. Grace is still hopeful they might— in time. I just need to spend more of it with them. Spending a year and a half as an Amelia-cicle didn’t help. Then everything in Argentina… and then, and then, and then... Essentially, as Kate put it, “You need to make time.”
Ivar’s Seafood sits neatly on the docks with a terrific view of the Puget Sound. The last time I was here I downed an alien drone in the Sound and fired off a mass driver that would end up vaporizing almost a half mile of the docks. When the Emjet flew over the city I couldn’t even tell where I’d blasted the heck out of things. I know Epic funneled a lot of our money into helping make repairs through anonymous donors. There are times I’m glad we have money to do those things.
Your mom is talking to you. Epic blinks the message several times drawing my attention.
“Right. Sorry, uh Mom,” I say trying to hide my faux pas by raising my spoon and taking a sip of my soup.
“I said, ‘are you liking being back?’ Kate visited us often while you were out in space, letting us know you were still alive. We were hoping when you returned you would be able to spend more time with us...?” She seems genuinely hopeful.
I feel sorry that I haven’t. Part of me is still hiding from them. Only part, though. “I’m sorry, to both of you,” I say, putting my spoon down and resting my chin on my fists. “I know this hasn’t been easy for you. I guess sometimes it’s easier to bury myself in the work than it is to disengage and maintain my relationships.”
To my surprise, they both burst out laughing. Dad holds his napkin over his mouth he’s laughing so hard. Mom just chuckles, leaning back in her chair and staring up at the ceiling. They’re so full of life and mirth I can’t help but join in. The waiter walks by with a fresh batch of drinks; I see him giving us the eye as he leaves. I grab my Coke and drain half the glass before we start talking again. I put it down next to the other three empties. What can I say? I like Coca-Cola.
My dad reaches over and places his hand on mine and squeezes. “You’ve described the problem of every scientist ever. Your mom and I have had a number of discussions on this very subject.”
This may be the first time he’s spontaneously touched me in such a familiar way. He can’t know this is exactly what he used to do when I was a kid and we would be having a discussion on my behavior. He looks at me, his eyes going wide as he feels something too. I glance down at his hand and am overwhelmed with a desire to cover it with mine, so I do. Everything I’ve held back for the last several years… all the walls and barriers I put up co
me crashing down so suddenly that I can’t see or hear… My heart aches as I pull myself to him and throw my arms around his neck and bury myself in his chest.
“Papa,” I whisper. Until this moment they weren’t back. Even if they never regain all their memories, part of them remembers me. The way he used to hold my hand, how he would pick me up and spin me around. I’m sobbing, I hate that I’m sobbing. We’re in public but I can’t stop. I’ve waited so long for them to be back. To come home to me. I worked for this every day of my life for fourteen years. Now, I keenly feel the last few years I’ve wasted because I thought they weren’t them.
His arms wrap around me, followed by my mama’s, and everything is right in the world. I can feel their warmth and love and for an instant, I’m a six-year-old girl again coming home from the first-grade science fair with the grand prize.
“We love you, Amelia,” Mom whispers in my ear. “We may not remember the specifics, but we feel the emotions. You’re our daughter and we love you.”
I want to stay there forever, with them holding me and the warm fuzzies in my chest. I can’t believe how stupid I’ve been the last couple of years. I made a decision based on fear and it was the worst decision of my life. My doubt that they would never remember me, my fear that I couldn’t have them back led me to pretend they didn’t exist. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
We break apart and I don’t even care that there are people watching us. I wipe my face with the back of my sleeve before mom hands me a napkin. “You’ll get makeup on your shirt, dear.”
“Ha. Kate wishes.” Mom raises her eyebrow at me. “I don’t really wear much makeup. Kate wishes I would put more on, but I don’t really enjoy doing it. I try to keep it to the bare minimum,” I say by way of explanation.
“Maybe we should do it together? There’s no reason you can’t enjoy makeup and be a scientist. Besides, I’m sure Luke would appreciate— oh dear. I’m sorry honey,” Mom says.
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