Unyielding (Out of the Box Book 11)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Looks like you’re my last hostage,” I said, and she stared at me, blank of face. Someone was blocking me from the others, and I had a feeling I knew who that was, but Dr. Quinton Zollers would have a hell of a time keeping me from killing Ariadne Fraser and retrieving the serum before Sienna Nealon got here to “save the day.” He wasn’t on the premises, after all, and however strong his mind might have been, I could at least keep him out mentally while the Secret Service kept him out physically.

  The phone beeped. “Mr. President, the Secret Service has compiled the footage you’ve asked for if you’d like to step out and—”

  “Just a minute, Ms. Krall,” I said, coming around the desk, triumphant. I had this. Victory was at hand. All I needed was the serum, a little boost, and Dr. Zollers wouldn’t be playing any more games. He’d be just another amoeboid like the rest, in my thrall, working toward the goals of humanity. I stared at the Resolute desk, knowing my success was only moments away, and that Sienna Nealon was still at least minutes from DC, even if she hurried—

  Something grabbed me by the back, yanking me out the hole in the wall that Friday had made. “What the—” I yelled, but I was already speeding along, propelled through the air in a straight line. The White House shrunk below me before I even managed to get out another yell, the West Wing shrinking until it looked like a little building block on the ground far beneath. I couldn’t even see the Secret Service agents on the roof as dots, and I was high enough up in less than a minute that the air was starting to get thin.

  My mind sped along; Sienna Nealon had still been thousands of miles away, unable to snatch me—and I hadn’t felt hands on my back in any case. No, this was different, it was as though gravity itself had been turned on its ear, reversing and pulling me away.

  I slowed in my ascent, hanging, my mind lashing out and finding nothing to take hold of. That damned Doctor Zollers, he was blocking me even here, so far above the earth.

  I came to a halt like an elevator that had reached its floor, and I hung there, suspended above Washington, DC. It was such an ugly sprawl. I looked down at the Capitol building, powerless to move myself, and I felt a shudder of chagrin as I realized that once more, somehow, this mistress of the physical realm had turned my best-laid plans against me.

  I saw movement to my right and turned my head. There was a woman there in a black and white costume, quite stylish really, and I rolled my eyes. “Who the hell are you?” I asked out of habit, even though I already knew who she was before she opened her mouth to answer.

  97.

  Jamie Barton

  Her name was Jamie Barton, but everyone knew her now as Gravity, the hero of Staten Island. She hovered there, above Washington, DC, with an anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach, like she was doing something wrong and about to be caught at it. Well, that was no surprise, was it? She’d just kidnapped the President of the United States, after all.

  “I’m just going to have to keep you here for a few minutes, sir,” Jamie said, a little nervously. This hadn’t been her idea, obviously, but when Sienna Nealon had called and laid out the case for what needed to be done …

  … Well, it was hard to ignore her, especially when words like “telepath” and “plot to take over the world,” came into play. Outlandish as they may have sounded.

  “I don’t know what you’ve been told,” Harmon said, straining like he was trying to concentrate on her, “but whatever it is—”

  “I hear you’re a telepath,” she said, becoming more confident—though only marginally—the longer she was in place here, with the president before her. “That you were going to try and take over everyone’s minds.”

  “Isn’t that the most ludicrous thing you’ve ever heard?” Harmon asked, shrugging his shoulders against the gravity channel that was keeping him suspended in the air.

  “Close,” Jamie said.

  “Come on,” Harmon said, wheedling. “Let me down. Go on about your life, and we’ll pretend none of this ever happened. I don’t know what Sienna Nealon has told you, but it should be obvious to anyone with a brain that she’s the villain here—”

  Jamie swallowed hard. “No, sir. I’m keenly aware of exactly how it feels when someone else paints you as the villain. And I don’t think she is, in this instance.”

  Harmon cocked an eyebrow at her. “I know you had a rough time when everyone turned against you, but—”

  “I very much doubt you do, sir.”

  Harmon chuckled lightly, though there didn’t seem to be much humor in it. He seemed to be straining, as though his mind were elsewhere. “I need to—ah—”

  “Just wait here a few minutes, sir,” Jamie said, pulling gently on another gravity channel. “Answers are coming.”

  She started to activate another gravity channel as Harmon stared at her. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Bringing a friend up,” Jamie said, concentrating only a little on that other channel. She’d received the direction on where to put it via a voice in her head, which was a peculiar thing, something that lent a little credence to the story Sienna Nealon had left on that voicemail. She’d been at work when Sienna had called and had only checked her purse later. That had sent her scrambling, first to decide whether she should believe it, and then to decide whether it was something she should act on.

  She’d still been undecided until she saw the hole in the West Wing, and the president walking around inside like nothing was wrong. That was weird, right? Wouldn’t the Secret Service have evacuated him under normal conditions if there were a hole in the Oval Office? She’d yanked him up, easy as pie, and not a single agent had followed him out, pointing guns at the air, looking for the threat.

  Something was rotten in DC, but then, that was hardly surprising.

  Jamie slowed the gravity channel as her other guest appeared, balanced and calm in a way that Harmon hadn’t managed. The president looked like he was hanging by his armpits; the new arrival looked like he was sitting on a cushion of air.

  “Hello, Jamie,” said the older man, almost reclining on her channel, “My name is Dr. Quinton Zollers, and I’m friend of Sienna’s.” He had a gleam in his eye, and his smile was amused, even as he dangled thousands of feet above the city of Washington, DC. “And a telepath, obviously.”

  “Oh, obviously,” Harmon said, squinting in anger at Zollers.

  “You seem a little worn out, Mr. President,” Zollers said, switching his attention to Harmon, the blue afternoon sky a lovely backdrop for the most bizarre conversation Jamie had ever been a part of. “Have you been overexerting yourself?”

  “I run a rough schedule,” Harmon said, his features relaxing, concentration seeming to falter. He looked away from Zollers.

  “Well, I imagine taking over the world is a full-time job,” Zollers said.

  “What are you going to do with me?” Harmon asked, staring off into distant white, sunlit clouds.

  “That’s not my call to make,” Zollers said. “Or hers,” he inclined his head toward Jamie. “We’re just keeping you here until—”

  “Until Sienna Nealon arrives to kill me,” Harmon said with sudden ferocity. He looked right at Jamie. “Do you condone murder?”

  Jamie felt like she’d been hit in the face. “I—no!”

  “We’re not going to murder you, Mr. President,” Zollers said.

  “Forgive me if I don’t take you at your word as you kidnap me out of the White House and suspend me above the city,” Harmon said.

  “If we wanted you dead,” Zollers said pleasantly, “I could just switch off Ms. Barton’s gravity channel right now and let nature take its course.”

  Jamie felt her stomach drop. If he could really do that … and Harmon could do the same … “Oh my goodness,” she whispered.

  “You’re starting to see the scope of the problem now,” Zollers said. “Yes, he has the same powers I do, but he’s gone and tired himself trying to control too many people over the last few days. His defenses are weak en
ough that I could sit on him for quite a while without similarly exhausting myself.” He cocked his head, looking right at Harmon. “But that formula you had developed, Mr. President … that was a dirty trick. Taking away peoples’ lives … their wants, their desires …”

  “The world would have thanked me,” Harmon snapped, and Jamie almost gasped; it sounded like an admission to her. “Once it was done. No more problems. No more worries.”

  “No more self,” Zollers said. “No more individuals. No more sense of identity apart from the group.” He shuddered, still sitting on air with a calm that was impressive considering how most people Jamie lifted up tended to freak out at ten feet. “Forgive me if, as a psychiatrist, I find that … unpalatable.”

  “Well, it would put you out of work, so I understand your reticence to embrace the revolution,” Harmon said with surprising cheer. “It would also put all the defense contractors out of business, though, so …” He shrugged. “What is it the capitalists call it? Creative destruction?”

  “Ah, here she comes,” Zollers said, and it was so; Sienna Nealon streaked out of the sky and slowed, breathless, her body glowing with a very dim flame.

  “That’s a good look on you,” Jamie said. “Very Hunger Games.”

  “Yeah,” Sienna said, looking down at the flame that wrapped her torso, “I didn’t have time to pick up new clothes, so …” She shrugged and glanced at Harmon. “Any chance I can borrow your coat?”

  Harmon glared at her. “I would tell you to go jump off a building, but I think we all know that would be pointless.” He remained there, sullen, then finally rolled his eyes and stripped off his jacket, tossing it to her. Sienna caught it and wrapped it around herself, rolling up the sleeves so her arms didn’t disappear in them. Harmon wasn’t a large man, but he was still considerably bulkier than Sienna. She let the flames die down around her as she buttoned the coat, and was left with a V-shaped strip of her chest between her breasts exposed, as well as her legs. Her hair stopped glowing as well, revealing a bright pink mohawk.

  Jamie raised an eyebrow. “That’s, uh … stylish, I guess.”

  “You’d know better than I would,” Sienna said, folding her arms awkwardly in front of her, as though the V-shaped exposure of her chest made her uncomfortable. Her arms blocked most of the view, not that Jamie could see anyone around them who cared. Harmon was staring in the other direction, still plainly sullen. “Thanks for coming,” Sienna said.

  “Your message got my attention,” Jamie said, staring at the president of the United States with mounting unease. “He’s really a telepath?”

  “Yeah,” Sienna said.

  “And he was going to take control of all our minds,” Jamie said. That was not a question. She was pretty convinced of that.

  “He came pretty close, I’d say.” Sienna shifted in the air. “If not for you, he would have done it.”

  “Wow,” Jamie said, shifting on her gravity channel in discomfort. “I, uhm … what are you going to do with him?”

  Sienna stared at Harmon, who gave her a glance. “To be determined,” she said. “But I gotta get him out of here. Zollers can only hold him off for so long.”

  “I can last a while longer,” Zollers said. “But I wouldn’t wish to give the president too large an opening to escape.”

  “Where are you heading?” Jamie asked nervously. She still felt like she’d gotten involved in something she shouldn’t have stuck her nose into.

  “Northeast, I think,” Sienna said, glancing at Zollers, who shrugged. “Away from people.”

  “Um, okay,” Jamie said, certain she didn’t want to know any more than that. There was one nagging question in her mind, though, and she found the courage to ask it. “Any chance you can drop me back in New York?” She felt the ragged edge of exhaustion starting to work on her. “Because I had to take the train on the way up, and after sitting here waiting for you …” She let out a little sigh. “Yeah, I’m kinda tired.”

  98.

  Sienna

  We dropped Jamie back in Staten Island as we flew over and were out of sight before she had even ridden her gravity channel to the ground. I was keeping it just over the speed of sound, Zollers clutching tightly to my back, and my hands grasping President Harmon firmly underneath his armpits.

  “This could have been paradise,” Harmon said somewhere over Massachusetts.

  “I doubt it,” I said, quippy once more. “Boston is only paradise for the truly deranged.”

  After a few minutes, a very important thought occurred to me: “Hey, since I’m carrying the president, does this mean I’m Air Force One?”

  Harmon twisted his head to look back at me, face written over with disgust. “You’re certainly thick enough to be.”

  “You’re awfully saucy for someone who could be dropped unceremoniously at any time.”

  He reached up and patted me on the shoulder, then dropped his hand down to the side of my neck, where it rested for a few seconds, as though he were trying to reassure me or something. “I’m sorry. What I meant to say was that you’re not nearly as fat as the last Air Force One.”

  “You really, truly are a dick,” I said, reaffirming my initial assessment of him.

  He patted me on the neck again, probably because it was the only part of me he could easily reach. I dropped him a little lower, and he broke contact, grabbing my arm just below the sleeve until he realized I wasn’t going to let him go. “I regret sending you that fruit basket now.”

  “Ariadne ate it anyway,” I said, glaring at him. “Did you really erase her mind of—”

  “Anything related to you?” he asked. “At the risk of finding myself in sudden freefall, I cannot tell a lie—yes, I did.”

  “You lie all the time,” I said, seething. “She’d better be all right.”

  “She’s no worse off than your ex-boyfriend, whose memories you stole,” Harmon sniped back at me.

  Zollers patted me on the shoulder, but it was more comforting and less condescending than Harmon’s attempt. “Don’t let him get to you.” I could hear the strain in his voice.

  “Yes, don’t let me get to you,” Harmon agreed, the wind whipping past us. “I’m about to be dead anyway, aren’t I?”

  “That’s to be determined,” I said. I really didn’t know quite what to do with him yet. I had a vague idea of where I was carrying him, though, as we passed over the Atlantic and went “feet wet,” as they call it in the military.

  “Oh, goody,” Harmon said as we flew toward the darkness of the coming night, and on into the growing uncertainty.

  99.

  Scott

  He woke up in sight of a small town, no sign of the battlefield where he’d faced off with Sienna against his will. The late afternoon sun and chill wind that swept across the plains suggested that it was about to get a lot colder. Plains dust had settled over his ripped and shredded suit and it hurt to open his eyes, but that burning headache had mercifully vanished.

  “Where am I?” Reed asked, sitting up next to him.

  “Ohhh, man,” Augustus moaned, not bothering to get up. He was clutching his head like it had been squeezed in a vice. “Anyone else had a train squeezed through their ear?”

  “I’m looking for the tracks right now,” Reed said, eyes shut tight against the pain that seemed to be a commonality between the three of them. “I think someone shoved one up my nose, hard.”

  “She must have … beat him,” Scott said, causing Reed and Augustus to look at him cock-eyed.

  “Who?” Reed asked, still squinting hard. He coughed, spitting dust off his tongue.

  “Sienna,” Scott said, closing his eyes. “She must have taken out Harmon, or stopped him, or something.”

  “Wait, whut?” Augustus muscled himself up to sitting. “Man, what are you talking about?”

  “Harmon,” Scott said, clutching his head as though it were still in danger of exploding. “He’s been controlling our minds these last few months.” They both looked at him
blankly. “We’ve been hunting Sienna all this time … you remember that, right?”

  “I remember …” Augustus said, slowly, as though thinking it through. “I mean, we were after … but …” He stared into space. “She was a dangerous fugitive, though, right?”

  Scott shook his head and immediately regretted it because it hurt. He stared at the town in the distance. “She’s always dangerous. And she was a fugitive, yeah, but … I don’t think she had anything to do with what they accused her of.”

  “That can’t be right,” Reed said quietly. “We …” He blinked. “I mean … the things we did …”

  “Oh, shit,” Augustus said. “How long has it been since I’ve called Taneshia?” He fumbled for his phone, rummaging through his rumpled suit’s pockets before coming out with it. He let out a gasp of relief. “It still works.” He dialed frantically, pushing the phone to his ear. “Taneshia! Yeah, it’s me!” He frowned. “Where are you?”

  Reed just stared blankly. “I haven’t … called Isabella in weeks.” He blinked a few times. “Why … wouldn’t I call her? Why wouldn’t I see her?” He shuddered. “What … did I … do?” His hand came slowly up to his mouth, covering it as though to suppress something terrible coming out.

  “It wasn’t you,” Scott said hastily, remembering the nightmare of Harmon’s mind, forcing him along whatever line he pushed. He could feel something faintly, in the distance, at the reach of his powers …

  The last remnants of the plug in that baby’s leg where he’d kept the child from bleeding to death. It wasn’t terribly far away, Scott could feel, still and unmoving, blood still racing around that final remnant. It was even clearer to him now that there was more power at his disposal. He remembered the serum that had caused so much pain, and it thundered through his own blood even now, its work already done.

  “Reed,” Scott said, pushing to his feet. “You should go home.”