Night Shadows (Children of Nostradamus Book 2)

by Jeremy Flagg

  A hiss preceded the door popping open. She grabbed the crowbar, ready for more synthetics. The cockpit appeared vacant. Lights blinked and levers moved without hands guiding them. She had assumed there’d be a pilot she could beat, but whoever controlled this ship was hundreds of miles away. She didn’t have time to learn how to fly, nor to figure out how to work the controls. Even Dav5d sending her commands wouldn’t help them fast enough.

  She shoved the crowbar into the command station and pried it up, exposing the wires below. She reached in and pulled, tearing them from their casings. Sparks erupted from the console. She repeated the process with every computerized piece of equipment she could find. Sparks scattered in the cockpit and before the sprinklers released their fire retardant foam, she crammed the crowbar into the ceiling.

  Then something exploded. There was beeping and the ship jerked. She was worried they had a remote cockpit or some artificial intelligence had planned for her meddling. The ship leaned to the side as its nose pointed downward. She fell to the floor as it bumped into a second airship. She could only hope it managed to take out both of them.

  “I need an evacuation, Conthan.” Please, I hope Vanessa is listening.

  A black portal opened in the floor. She scrambled to her feet and fell through into the darkness.

  ***

  The ship tilted forward. Jasmine had no doubt it’d come down and by the looks of it, might very well land on the large mechs approaching them. She spun about, more concerned with the dozen synthetics racing toward them from the other direction. She hadn’t seen this model before. They moved along the pavement like dogs, their bodies human, but almost appearing animalistic in their behavior.

  Her skin morphed, the ripple starting at her bracers and flowing through her body. She screamed out loud as the transformation took place. She didn’t have any reason to hide the pain. Her scream turned to a roar, a battle cry signaling her willingness to fight.

  “For Troy,” she yelled.

  She ran. She lurched as her muscles adapted to the new weight. She winced as the pain moved through her limbs. The first synthetic approached. It jumped onto a car and lunged at her. The robot looked more like a feral cat than a synthetic. She slammed her fist into its face, spinning it around in midair. Another jumped on her. The moment it made contact, the body contorted until it looked similar to a standard synthetic.

  She pulled at its arm, and the sound of bending metal told her they weren’t much stronger than their predecessor. Her muscles strained for a moment longer. A wave of relief coursed through her body. Now, her muscles thickened. The arm ripped free and she grabbed onto the head, pulling back until it tore away from its body.

  Another synthetic cat jumped at her. Before it could tackle her to the ground, a flare of blue light sliced through its torso, separating it into two pieces.

  “Just as dumb as they were before.”

  Jasmine fell to the pavement as the first synthetic she encountered pounced on her back. She tried to stand but the machine clutched her wrists, putting her in a submission pose. Two feet landed in front of her and she heard the loud thunk of metal smashing into metal. The synthetic was off her and she scrambled to her feet. The portal in the air vanished and Alyssa rested the crowbar on her shoulder.

  “You’ve been a busy girl,” Jasmine remarked.

  “You know, it’s what I do.”

  A bolt of lightning flashed past them, searing into another synthetic. The machine tried to dodge, but the electricity followed the metal conduit. She couldn’t help but be impressed with Dwayne; his abilities were astounding. At some point, when they weren’t fighting for their lives, she’d have to ask him if he thought he’d ever control his abilities.

  Keep your head in the game.

  Jasmine turned to the rooftop where Vanessa grappled with a synthetic. She hurled the machine off the roof. Skits shoved her hand into its center, the blue fire melting its exterior. Jasmine felt the rumble as the airship hit the ground. Instead of scraping along the pavement, it drove nose-first, creating a crater.

  “Holy shit.”

  The two large mechs vanished under the weight of the ship. The bar was destroyed as the ship’s momentum sent up the ground in a ripple. Jasmine watched as Vanessa’s expression turned to horror. She didn’t need to be a telepath to know the exploding windows of Vanessa’s home tore at her heart. The walls collapsed and the roof caved in, leaving the building in rubble. The ground under her feet shook and she had to steady herself to keep from falling.

  “What now?” she yelled to Dwayne.

  The synthetics were already climbing over the wreckage, passing through flames. Before Dwayne could answer the question, another airship appeared. She swore. Whoever initiated this attack wanted to make sure they didn’t walk out alive. There were at least twenty synthetics coming from one direction and another twenty from the other.

  “We can’t win.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “Yes, we can,” Conthan said.

  His eyes were dark orbs, a liquid black that gave away the level of power he attempted to summon. He lost himself to his abilities, which meant he’d be far more lethal than normal. This was the Conthan she liked, the wild man, the dangerous one.

  “Take ‘em down,” she whispered.

  ***

  It wasn’t only the spot at the base of his skull calling out to him; every cell in his body worked in overdrive. The euphoria left him feeling as if he was flying. The imaginary well in the pit of his stomach housing his powers overflowed and all he had to do was let it take control.

  The expression on Jasmine’s face gave away the state of his eyes, the blackness consuming them. He concentrated on opening a portal. In the middle of the turbine keeping the airship aloft, gear shafts worked in conjunction to create enough torque to hold up the vessel. The portal opened in the middle, swallowing huge pieces of metal, causing gears to grind.

  Chunks of the craft fell into the void and his body reacted, determined to expel the materials. He opened another portal in the third airship, directly in the path of the massive spinning propeller. The edges of the black hole sliced through the blades, tearing the propeller to pieces. Material from one portal flew to the other and vice versa, destroying both airships.

  “Holy shit,” Dwayne muttered.

  Conthan’s heart skipped beats as the blades slammed into the portal. He never used his abilities to cut through a material, but he knew from practice with Dav5d that the edges were lethal. A person could slit themselves open on them if they weren’t careful. He had scars on his arms to prove it.

  “You’re truly frightening,” Dwayne said.

  Conthan couldn’t respond as the ships came crashing down. Explosions launched debris into the air, burning bright enough to be visible in daylight. Smoke plumed from the wreckage and synthetics attempted to force their way out of the crashing ships. He assumed the machines on the inside were still alive. There was no way to stop them if they got free.

  A hissing sound came out of nowhere. Conthan turned just in time to see a missile flying at the three of them. The portal opened without a thought. The exit appeared next to the twelve-foot-tall mech working its way toward them. The explosion sent the machine to the ground, one of its legs completely removed from its body. Conthan shut the portals and turned to the others.

  “I don’t know how many more times I can teleport.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Jasmine.

  “He’s our exit strategy. We have to make a decision to stay and fight or to run,” Dwayne said.

  Conthan gasped as Vanessa swooped down and snatched one of the synthetics out of the air. She redirected its momentum straight down. With a flap of her wings, she stopped moving forward and fell onto of the synthetic. Her feet landed on its shoulders, sending it to the ground. She reached down, grabbed the skull, and tore it free.

  “There are more coming,” she yelled to them.

  Dav5d stepped out of a doorway where he hi
d while the active powers fought. He pointed across the street. “We can go underground. There are limited access points and they can’t track us using satellites.”

  The subway entrance. Everybody hurry.

  ***

  Vanessa stood point while Dwayne ushered the others into the stairwell leading into the subway. She accepted his plan, to retreat underground where the larger mechs couldn’t follow and the airships would have difficulty detecting them. She wasn’t fearful, this escape had been planned years ago for just this reason. They’d be gone and out of sight before the machines had any chance to stop them.

  Her home was lost, the bar nothing more than a pile of rubble. There was a moment where she felt empty, unsure of what the next stage might bring. She was filled with emotion, possibly projections of her teammates. She wasn’t an empath, but it was hard to push away so many emotions bombarding her thoughts.

  She was about to turn and run toward the stairs when a lone woman caught her eye. Only a few feet away, a woman stood idly watching her. She knew whoever owned the image was nowhere nearby and that it must be some form of telepathy. Did this woman have anything to do with the attacks? Perhaps she was another telepath?

  Who are you? the woman asked.

  Vanessa didn’t quite understand what unfolded in front of her. The woman spoke, but her words were being cast mentally. She didn’t discount an entirely new type of mentalist; it would only be fitting.

  Vanessa blinked as a flash of a woman sitting in a small hotel room hit her. Sitting across from the woman was a burly man, both of them wearing clothes far too old to be a recent memory. Vanessa’s eyes went wide, her jaw opening slightly from disbelief.

  “Eleanor?” she asked aloud.

  How do you know me?

  Vanessa didn’t know what she could and couldn’t say. If she told her about the letters, would that mean she’d make them? By talking to a projection from the past, could she alter the future? She wished Dav5d saw this. He’d have already figured out the thousand ways every word they exchanged was altered the future.

  “You do something that changes the world, Eleanor Valentine.”

  The woman seemed to balk at the mention of her name. Neither of them flinched as an explosion erupted from the fallen airship. The ghost tried to take in the scene, clearly uncertain of what she was seeing.

  Did I do this?

  “You prevented this from being so much worse.”

  I can do better.

  “Vanessa!” Dav5d yelled from the stairs.

  “Thank you for saving me, Eleanor.”

  The woman’s ghostly eyes started to see through her. She knew it was only for a moment, but somehow, a woman from many decades ago was seeing their future. Vanessa assumed there was something about two mentalists crossing paths that made the encounter possible. She felt a sense of relief, finally able to thank the woman who rescued her from being killed as a child.

  As she jogged down the stairs, she had to wonder—if the woman could do better, what would that change about now? Was this the better? Had the change already happened? Or was there another wave of interventions about to happen courtesy of Eleanor? When they had time, she would tell the others, and then it would be up to Dav5d to make sense of it.

  For now, amidst the explosions and killing machines stalking her, she felt a moment of peace. She only hoped she survived long enough to enjoy it.

  Chapter 11

  1993

  Mark looked up from his book, carefully wedging his bookmark into place before setting it on the stand next to his recliner. Of all the furniture he had in his small home away from home, the recliner was his prized possession. When he told Elizabeth how long he would be away, she had asked if he wanted anything to remind him of home. Other than some essential photos of his family and a series of books to occupy his downtime, the recliner had been the most important. It was the one comfort he needed to feel at ease in the evenings. Elizabeth had laughed as he dragged the chair into the moving van.

  Without notice, the lights in his suite flashed, leaving him in the dark. It happened before. The first time, a hacker turned activist invaded their computer systems and rendered the electrical grid inoperable for days. The second time, a storm hit the center and fried their generators, plunging them into darkness. The emergency lights would kick on in a few seconds, bathing his living quarters in a dim red light.

  He waited, counting out the seconds in his head. One one thousand. Two one thousand. It normally didn’t take this long for the backup systems to kick in. Three one thousand. One of the research labs in the upper levels had wounded soldiers on life support. He hoped their power responded quicker than his. Four one thousand.

  The red lights flickered to life, nearly blinding him. The bulb clicked to life, bathing his living quarters in a dark red light. It reminded him of the darkroom in his college photography class. It had been under the safety lights that he first caught a glimpse of Elizabeth. From then on he made sure to arrive early enough to watch her walk in the door and he’d stay until she left. As she fumbled with film in a pitch black room, he’d help her put it on the reel. Their first kiss happened in the darkroom. Long before that, he fell in love with a woman whose name he barely knew underneath those red lights.

  “Such sweet memories.”

  Mark’s muscles tensed at the whisper from over his shoulder. The voice had a slight hiss to it, as if the person dragged out the letters with their tongue. He wanted to turn around but his feet refused to cooperate. He tried to throw his hand backward, but found the same feeling as in his feet made his arms refuse to move. He turned his head slightly, but nowhere could he see a person in the room with him.

  “There is only us, Mark,” said the soft voice. The warm heat of someone’s breath pushed along the skin behind his ear. The closeness made the pit of his stomach clench. The heat radiating from their mouth as they breathed on his neck violated his personal space. There was something oddly sexual about a person breaching his personal bubble.

  “Who are you?”

  “Who are we, Mark?”

  “Answer the damned question.”

  “Fear, Mark,” the voice said, accentuating the end of the phrase. “I can see you, Mark, what scares you most.”

  Before he could think of his biggest fear, the room shifted from his suite to a massive field. Unlike the dark room he had been immobilized in, here he breathed the clean air and felt the sun kissing his skin. The shift of location gave him a moment of clarity to figure out what was happening.

  “I’m dreaming.”

  “Or is it a nightmare?” asked the voice.

  It lost its scary edge, drowned out by the wind-rustled grass. He reached out and touched some of the tallest weeds, grazing them with his fingertips. There was a second when he wanted to stay in that moment, free of the fluorescent lights and lab coats. The carefree sensation running through his body had him elated to the point where he contemplated running through the field.

  A gray object hidden amongst the overgrown weeds gave him pause, looking somewhat out of place in this beautiful scene. He wasn’t sure why, but his pulse raced and he needed to be standing at the stone markers. He pushed his way through the grass, moving recklessly, tearing at the weeds as he moved. He bumped into the two large objects and began to tear away at the vines threatening to squeeze the stones into pebbles.

  “No,” he gasped.

  He fell backward and pushed away from the monument. His hands sunk into the dirt, the cold soil wrapping itself around his fingers. He kept saying it over and over again, as if his denial changed the reality in front of him.

  “Here lies Elizabeth Davis,” whispered a distant voice.

  “No!” he screamed.

  “Yes,” said the voice, its tone almost pleased with Mark’s disbelief.

  Mark stared at the carved letters spelling his wife’s name. No date, nor cause of death, just her name chiseled out of granite. Horror gripped his heart as his head turned slightly to lo
ok at the smaller stone. Vines covered the name underneath, but he didn’t need to claw at the vegetation to know whose it was.

  His eyes watered as he tried to process the information. He didn’t remember what happened, or what had taken his family away. He wailed uncontrollably and his nose ran as he filtered through his lifetime of memories. Just as he was about to start cursing God, a dark figure stepped up behind the tombstones. Through tear-filled eyes he tried to make out the person standing behind his wife’s grave.

  “Hello?”

  Mark wiped his eyes as the person stepped through the stones. The figure loomed over his broken body, blocking out the sun. It dawned on him: nobody was really there. Its body consisted of smoke and looked as if a smoldering fire filled the air with black soot.

  “I am very much here, Mark.”

  Between blinks the figure went from smoky apparition to his chief of security. “Goddard? Is that you?”

  The man reached out and touched Mark’s face, caressing his cheek far more intimately than their relationship allowed. Mark pulled away, never wanting the man to touch him, let alone make a sympathetic gesture. Whoever it was standing above him, it wasn’t the chief of security he had grown to loathe over the past year No, this was somebody else entirely.

  He blinked. Ariel stood above him. She gave a slight giggle. He recognized her voice, but there was something uncomfortably wrong about what was happening. Hadn’t she been somebody else just a moment again? he thought. It seemed he couldn’t remember what was happening in the dream.

  “A dream,” he whispered.

  Ivan leaned in, grabbing both sides of Mark’s face, black tendrils snaking their way along his skin. As Mark gasped, wisps of smoke threatened to coat his lungs. He pulled backward, kicking with his legs, trying to put as much distance as possible between him and the researcher. He flipped over and got his feet under him, trying to scurry away.