“She is getting peppered,” J.J. reported with faint glee, laptop sitting across his knees in the back of the helo. The Great Salt Lake was right out there, and they were hovering in place, waiting to see which way she went. Scott just stared, watching her fall, because it was starting to look an awful lot like this hunt and kill mission was about to simplify into a corpse recovery operation.
“And a-salted,” Friday guffawed.
You can’t let her die, a small voice sounded in Scott’s head.
That’s our job. Kill her.
He ignored the second voice, peering at the falling shadow in the distance. She was coming down hard, not even trying to fly, and it wasn’t because Booster was draining her. She’d been blasted by the missiles, he was pretty sure.
Scott grimaced, looking out of the corner of his eye. Reed’s face was lit by the cargo lights, a rough ecstasy etched on his expression as he watched her drop. That’s not normal, Scott thought, and it only seemed to reinforce his mutinous musings.
There was only one thing for it.
He didn’t bother to raise his hand, because that was just for show, really. He’d gotten beyond that now, simplified things. He concentrated hard on her, on her place in the air as she dropped out of the sky. There was moisture out there—thin, but present.
And it was his to control.
Scott reached out with his thoughts, bringing that moisture together. He could make it maintain position or move as he desired, and he desired to do both. He pulled it out of the air, small amounts, too subtle for anyone back here to see. It wasn’t much, but when he packed it solidly enough—
She slowed, almost imperceptibly. He had hands of solid water tugging at her, altering her speed, producing a little drag. He introduced a little more, then a little more, and though she fell, she was no longer gathering momentum. She’d slowed, was drifting—
“She’s awake, clearly,” Reed said. He lurched out of the helicopter, clutching his rifle, with no sign of hesitation. He lit off a three-shot burst the moment he was clear, even though he was nearly a mile away from where Sienna was falling.
“Dammit,” Scott said, jumping out of the copter after him. The lake was beneath him, so he didn’t fear the jump or the landing, only that it might steal some of his concentration away from the task at hand. He continued to slow her, trusting that Reed’s hastiness wouldn’t help him. M-16s weren’t accurate at this distance, were they?
His feet landed on a solid pillar of water that rose up to greet him and he slid along automatically, twenty feet up, as though riding a moving walkway. Salty spray tickled his face as he sped up, outpacing Reed quickly. He kept his mind half on the forward motion, half on slowing Sienna. She was probably at less than two thousand feet now, still coming down fairly hard, not exactly drifting like a delicate leaf.
This is going to be tight, Scott thought, trying to decide how best to even handle this. He looked back; Reed was almost keeping up with him, the winds at his command flinging him forward. He’d gotten better, that was for sure. Now he was flying, genuinely flying.
Sienna came tumbling closer, spiraling toward the surface, and for the first time, Scott saw the shadow catching up to her. “Oh, damn,” he muttered, and pushed the hands of water to drag her faster.
It was another missile.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on yet another thing, trying to pack water together solidly, tightly enough, ripping it out of the dry desert air and hoping there was enough to—
Another explosion rippled over him, and Scott saw the missile blow up behind her. It was probably thirty feet up, having crashed into the wall of water he’d thrown to protect her—
Something else crashed hard into his shield and Scott felt it ripple as another blast echoed over the Great Salt Lake. Pieces of shrapnel pelted through, and he tried to rob them of their momentum, steal it from them before they stole Sienna’s life.
“Come on, come on,” Scott muttered. He was slowed in his own forward movement, trying to keep from distracting himself too much. He caught another glimpse of Reed overhead, who was speeding toward his sister—
He’ll kill her.
LET HIM!
Scott thrust a spear of water out and smashed it into Reed like a solid wall. It turned him over in midair, knocked him asunder, and down he fell, the wind taken right out of him, unconscious. Scott caught him but let the M-16 fall into the lake.
Sienna was close now, and he reached out a hand—not because he needed to, but because it felt right, as though he could somehow add an extra effort, reach out and control the events playing out before him even though he couldn’t, not really. He sped her up as another missile blew off on his last shield, and she hit the water, disappearing beneath the surface without even a splash—
49.
Harmon
“Tango down.”
I stared at the screen, at the motion on the water. I couldn’t see it very clearly, but I knew that both Reed and Scott were there, using their powers to influence the outcome. I needed to see, so I reached out—first to Reed, because he was the one I’d most recently “acquired,” but his mind was hazy, unconscious.
I recoiled, his dreams light and his pain showing through. He’d been hit somehow, I could sense that much, and I didn’t care to feel it. I withdrew my consciousness from him and moved on, to Scott …
He was there, plainly, but something was wrong. Pushing into his mind was like trying to squeeze your foot into a child’s shoe, and I strained at the imposition. I could see only hazily through his eyes, as he concentrated on something, and so I forced myself in—
50.
Scott
It was not the easiest thing, keeping a living person alive underwater, but Scott was trying. It wasn’t the hardest thing for him, either, given that he could breathe water like he had gills. Most couldn’t, though, and he knew if he brought Sienna to the surface, those missiles would probably keep coming.
He had to play possum with her, at least for a while. At least until they were sure she was—
The wash of the chopper coming in behind him brought with it something else, a pressure in his head like it was splitting wide. He felt as though he’d been struck with an axe, the blade catching him squarely in the middle of the skull like a piece of wood meant to be chopped.
Scott staggered on his platform of water, and his control faltered. He’d created a web of invisible tubes that stretched down to where Sienna was cradled in the water’s depths, the tubes feeding her fresh oxygen from the surface as—
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? the voice thundered, that quiet one that he’d been ignoring, defying, fighting—
But it was here now, and louder than before, and suddenly … the tubes he’d used to feed Sienna oxygen were gone, just gone.
And then … his powers kicked in, his hand clenching wildly into a fist, and Scott knew he needed to kill the thing that was in those depths, hiding in those waters. It was a monster, something to be annihilated without mercy or remorse. He seized control of the water and started to press the molecules tight, ready to crush the threat lurking beneath the surface …
51.
Sienna
I woke up underwater, with a mouth full of salty cold liquid, and felt like I was about to be crushed to death by the pressure.
As far as scary wake-ups go, it was probably in my top two.
I gasped for breath but stopped short of inhaling water, which was probably a good thing. The salinity was off the charts, so salty that even in my near-panicked state I knew I was in the Great Salt Lake.
You’re healed, Wolfe said, calmer by a hundred degrees than I was, given I was submerged in a lake at night, with the water pressing in on me like I’d reached crush depth. Move?
Nice suggestion, I shot back, his calm bringing my panic down a couple notches. Gavrikov?
Trying, Gavrikov said, and I strained against the press of the water. It squeezed me, and I could feel the direction gravity should have
been pulling me by the resistance of the water as it held me down. I realized squarely in the midst of my fight exactly what was happening.
Scott had hold of me, and apparently he’d gotten Harmon in his head again.
I didn’t have a hope of beating him while trapped in the depths of the lake, and my oxygen was bound to run out soon. I thrashed to no effect, the water pushing in tighter and putting my arms to my sides as my ribs started to crack under the weight.
DRAGON! Bastian shouted. NOW!
What the hell, why not? I figured and started to transform.
My clothing shredded in a hot second, and my legs elongated like lengths of rope drifting down. My neck stretched like I’d been hanged, twisting through the powerful water pressure bearing down on me. It fought me, tried to push me into the depths of the lake, but it was like the water couldn’t quite get a grip as I slithered my way through.
I broke the surface headfirst, sucking in lungfuls of oxygen as I continued to grow, my neck stretching. My wings cleared the surface next, even as tendrils of water tried to snake me back down, and I twisted, ripping my tail free and clearing the surface by fifty feet, picking out the dark shoreline ahead and rushing toward it with full Gavrikov speed. I was exhausted, my body threatening to crash at any moment. Being ripped apart by AMRAAM missiles and dropped into the lake and nearly crushed by my ex, who was under psychic control by the president—
You know, I lead a weird life.
I crashed on a beach, salty flavor on my tongue and night air conspiring to freeze me and make me want a margarita to go along with all the troubles I was presently having. I was definitely on the rocks.
A helicopter’s blades came sweeping around, the chop like an announcement that death was coming for me. I staggered up, resuming my human form, tail contracting and splitting into two legs as I sparked up Gavrikov’s fire to avoid the feds adding a public nudity charge to my already considerable list of offenses. Sand between my toes squished as Scott came up onto the shore with a splash, a little wall of water at his feet and Reed washed up in his wake. I breathed a sigh of relief to see that my brother, though unconscious, was still alive.
“You won’t … get away …” Scott said, but his voice was husky and angry, like it had been for months.
“Starting to get that feeling, yeah,” I said, my shoulders slumped, my fire leotard lighting up the night with its torch glow. Scott stared at me, his hatred burning like my makeshift clothing. I looked up, wondering how many planes they’d stacked up above me. Judging by the number of missiles they’d pelted me with, it was a lot. Maybe an entire fighter wing.
“You should have joined me,” Scott said, but his voice was different, smoother—he sounded like Harmon.
“You should have asked,” I said, taking a weak, staggering step back.
“I—” Scott’s voice made a return as he grunted in pain, “This is not—I’m not—”
“It’s not you, Scott,” I said as the chopper edged closer and closer. It’d be landing soon, and I suspected that Team Revelen would come pouring out, along with their sapper, and if I had to fight all these guys off right now, I was going to die on this beach, possibly from exhaustion before any of them even laid a hand on me. “Harmon’s in your head, telling you what to do.”
“You’re—a monster,” Scott said, his face manic, eyes wild in the light.
“He’s just telling you that,” I said, staggering back again. “Planting thoughts in your head …”
“I know—what you are,” he said, and a silken, shadowy wave rose behind him in the darkness. He could crush me with it, drag me back into the surface of the water, drown me easily. “You’re a—you’re a—” He struggled with it, like Harmon was inside, fighting him, cramming more thoughts in his head that didn’t belong there.
I swallowed heavily and dropped to a knee. I couldn’t fly. I couldn’t run. I’d bled out so much I wondered if I’d lost my entire body’s worth of blood volume. I’d been drowned, shot at, and now the hounds that were ready to chase me to the gates of hell were swooping in for the kill.
I had nothing left.
“What am I?” I asked, thumping down on my butt. His wave swept in around me on three sides, ready to crash, ready to drown me, ready to end it all.
“You’re a—” His face twitched. “—a—
“Hero.”
The words were soft, quiet, and sounded like the real Scott, the one I’d known before this year had destroyed him, ground him up and fed him to President Harmon. I looked up and saw his face, frozen for one brief moment in placid calm—
And then the anger broke back through and the waves came crashing down around me—
52.
Scott
His fury like a cloak around him, Scott drove his waters forward, furious, drowning power at his fingertips. He raged against the space where they’d swallowed up the monster before him, solidifying the water in such a way as to create spear-tips. He drove them in, again and again, attacking with anger and certainty.
Whatever was in there, it needed to be destroyed. It was an implacable foe, it was—
A BEAST.
—and death would surely follow for all those around him should he let off his attack. He had to be sure, had to destroy it utterly, the salt brine splashing around, the night air torn asunder as the strike team approached behind him.
“Leave us a little, huh?” Mac asked, knife flashing in the moonlight. “I had aims to carve her heart and lungs out.”
“I don’t think you’re going to find much of those left,” Ferko said in that accent of his, hair twitching wildly. “The water is strong with this one.”
“How’s Reed?” Augustus asked, and Scott looked back to see Gothric leaning over him, fingers touching the Aeolus on the face. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know,” Scott said and faltered, his control over the waves lost. Water rushed out and splashed past, like tide rolling back to join the Great Salt Lake. The waters cleared, slowly, running past him, his feet, past the others, and last of the roiling storm of them dying away before him.
And when it passed … there was nothing there of the monster he’d aimed to kill. No blood, no bones, no tissue …
Nothing.
53.
Harmon
“Target lost,” the general said over the commlink, and I quieted a silent scream in my mind. Scott’s waters had receded, disappeared, rejoined the collective of H2O that waited within the Great Salt Lake, and I was left to watch from the satellite view—because I’d grown quickly sick of watching from within Scott’s head, once I’d tinkered to make his thinking right once more—as our little vista of the battlefield revealed that the battle was over.
Apparently we’d lost, because somehow we’d lost Sienna Nealon.
I kept a steely control on my voice. “She was right there. How did you … lose her?”
“I don’t know, sir,” General Forster answered, baffled. “We’re reviewing the tape—”
“I doubt it’s a tape,” I said. “Join the twenty-first century.”
“Just a figure of speech, sir,” the general said, clearly miffed by my passive-aggressive swipe at him. It was nothing like what I wanted to do. “She—we didn’t see her fly out—”
“Yes, I was watching that, too,” I said, seething and barely keeping a lid on it. These people around me were worse than useless, they were incompetent. One little thing I wanted done, and it couldn’t even be finished. She’d been broken on that beach, I’d seen to it before I had to recuse myself from Scott Byerly’s entirely-too-small brain. Technology had failed, but worse than that, men had failed. Men always failed, though, that was the hallmark of humanity—a series of continuous failures.
I reached out and touched the general’s mind. It wasn’t difficult; we’d met many times before, and I’d seen in his thoughts, twisted them a little to make him more loyal. Loyalty was one thing, but competence was another, and it was something I couldn’t ins
till with my powers. Not at this point, anyway.
I ventured deeper into his mind, could see the room in the Pentagon where he was watching a similar screen to mine, could smell the cold, stale coffee in the mug in front of him. A half-dozen junior officers were all around him, rushing, working, trying to figure out how they’d screwed this up.
There wasn’t an ounce of deception within him. It wasn’t a failure of integrity; it was the failure of him being a moron. I could abide a lot of things, but my temper had reached its end with stupidity.
So I reached into the part of his mind that governed control of his tongue, had him shift the floppy, muscular instrument in question so as to block his airway, and then numbed that part of his brain so he couldn’t fix what I’d done. Then I left his mind—such as it was—because I had no desire to take a front row seat for what was going to happen next.
The gurgling noise over the open line heralded my return to my own skull. It wasn’t a pretty sound, but then, it never was. “General?” I asked politely. “General?” I said again, when he didn’t answer.
The gurgling turned into a choking, and then I heard a clatter on the other side. “General!” someone shouted, and a great thud suggested to me that the general had fallen out of his chair.
“What’s going on?” I asked, sounding greatly concerned, I hope.
“The general is choking, sir!” one of the lesser officers shouted.
“My goodness,” I said. “Someone give him the Heimlich maneuver.” I wasn’t helping with this suggestion; a Heimlich would no more save him than it would someone with cancer. He needed an ambulance or a corpsman or something of the sort, and even those were unlikely to help. Perhaps a tracheotomy might save him, but I suspected it was too late.
More thudding, more choking, the sound of a chair being overturned. I listened all the while, disinterested, keeping my eyes on the monitors in front of me. Fortunately, not everyone had taken their eye off the ball due to the general’s unfortunate circumstances. The satellite view was slowly running back, then forward, the time-stamp indicating that it was around when I’d left Scott’s mind after pushing him to act again. There wasn’t much to see, just a quick flash of a line around the area in question. I peered at it, wondering what I was looking at.
Unyielding (Out of the Box Book 11) Page 17