Then I thought about the mole that King’s leaked documents said existed within our ranks. Code name Red. I hadn’t been sure what to make of it at first, but, as we listened for human movement, it all seemed to click together. Each piece that had been irregular, refusing to fit with any of the others, finally took shape.
Red.
The color stood out in my mind, but I wasn’t sure why. Was the red associated with something about this person? A spy with a penchant for red clothing or something of that nature?
Red. Red. Red.
An image of red, kind of like that of someone’s hair, came to mind. It didn’t so much as kind of float into my thoughts, as it was forced there by an unseen hand. Cato’s hand. His consciousness that resided within me that held the power he somehow shared. Well, more like gifted. If that was how I wanted to see it.
“Have you given any thought about who could be the mole?” I asked Ryder.
He looked down sheepishly and ran his hand over the back of his head, ruffling his freshly trimmed hair.
“You want the honest answer?”
“Of course.”
“I haven’t given much thought to it. I’ve been worried about you, mostly. Why do you ask?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about it. The code name seems too simple to me. Like, maybe it’s supposed to stand for something or describe someone in some way.”
The image of someone standing in the dusk of Kiawah Island flashed into my mind, copper hair flowing in the soft breeze, but no face to be seen. The force of the picture being shoved into my consciousness caused a small pang of pain in my right temple but, as quickly as it surfaced, it was gone. The form was turned away from me. Even the clothes they wore didn’t hint at anything, but the hair color did. I had only seen two people with that hair color.
Sisters. Twins. But it couldn’t be both of them, could it? From what I knew, there was only one mole. Not two.
His eyes went wide for a moment, and then anger moved across his features in a flash of heat.
“As in…” he began.
“Red hair,” I interjected.
“Son of a bitch,” he cursed under his breath.
As soon as the words left his mouth, a low humming noise filled the air. The wind picked up, kicking up sand and throwing it toward us. We both raised our hands to shield our eyes and blinked past the barrage of grit. A large, gray object came into view. I recognized it instantly. Two others joined it, flanking its sides just behind it. They raced by our heads, leaving trails of putrid white smoke in their wake. Black specks rained down from them, and it didn’t take me long to realize what they were. Soldiers floated down toward the water and toward the land we stood upon on parachutes, armed to the gills with the same types of weapons we ourselves had as well as some I had never seen.
A large man landed, hands ready on the pulley that would detach the parachute from his back. The other gripped a handgun, and I knew he had spotted us in the light speckled shadows already.
“Shit,” was the only word I could force from my lungs.
Gunfire ripped through the air from all directions while bullets whizzed past us. I jumped to my left as Ryder jumped to his right, twirling to end up behind the trees closest to us. I pushed my back against the rough bark and took my massive rifle in my hands, holding it up toward the sky while I turned off the safety, ready to fire at will. I turned my head to see Ryder mirroring my stance, his knees bent slightly. He waved his other hand at me and screamed out to me almost unintelligibly. I focused on his words as best I could.
“Run, Mila! Fall back! Fall back!” he shouted over the sounds of the planes overhead and gunfire.
I leaned my head back against the rough tree trunk and squeezed my eyes shut with a deep breath to ready myself to step back out into the fray.
You can do this. You have to run.
“Run, Mila. Run,” I spat at myself through gritted teeth.
That was all the pep-talk I needed. With a pounding heart and my right ear ringing from the noise, I stepped out from behind the tree and pulled the trigger. But I didn’t stick around to see if I hit my target on the sands. I ran at top speed toward the Paradigm, not looking back to see if Ryder followed even though I heard heavy and quick footfalls behind me.
“Fall back!” I heard Ryder yelling over the whizz and snap of bullets.
He was too far away. That was how I knew the footsteps behind me didn’t belong to him. They stopped, but I continued to run, quickly figuring out I still wasn’t in decent enough shape for a full-on sprint like this. I heard a loud pop, much louder than the others, and felt something slam hard into my back by my shoulder blade. It hurt but wasn’t the pain I had learned a bullet caused when it entered your flesh. It was that moment I was thanking the Paradigm for bringing bullet-proof vests along. The force of the impact knocked all the air from my lungs and caused me to fall to the ground.
I rolled to my back, and my mouth met the butt of another rifle. The iron taste of blood filled my mouth. Large, strong hands gripped the front of my vest and began to pull me up unceremoniously. My hands gripped his wrists, still stunned from the blow. My eyes met deep and piercing black ones through the haze. A long scar ran down the right side of his face and curved in, distorting his upper lip. I pulled my power into the palm of my hand and reached up toward him, planning to give him another scar to go with it.
“Up and at ‘em, Hunter. You’re coming with us,” the man growled as I stumbled once my feet hit the dirt. Things were still a little fuzzy, but I heard him say, “You’re nothing more than a scared little girl, aren’t you? Nothing to be scared of.”
Well, we’d see about that. I had killed more people than I cared to admit with my power. It was something that couldn’t be stopped once it started, and that by itself was a terrifying thought. My equilibrium was turning, albeit, slowly.
“I wouldn’t be too cocky,” I spat.
All he did was laugh, but he was about to learn why he shouldn’t. Heat licked at my insides, and I pushed it into my hands again. It built there, forming a protective shield around my clenched fist. Before I second-guessed myself, I punched him, the hit landing at his jaw. The power in the hit sent him stumbling backward and, once he stopped moving, he smiled up at me. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth and down his chin. The scar caused one side of his mouth not to lift, making his stare even more ominous. Demon eyes watched me, but I didn’t want to give him a chance to do or say anything else at my expense. I didn’t believe he was a Special, but with eyes like that, he had to do something extraordinary, right?
He leered at me and took a brazen step forward, his voice deepening. “Tired out, little girl? I know you’ve got more juice than that.”
I didn’t answer, just let the energy within my build so I could take him down in one strike instead of small blows.
“You killed my sister at King’s Forge, and I don’t care if King wants you alive. You’re dead, girl. Dead.”
If I weren’t shrouded in trees and foliage that deadened the sounds of the battle coming from all around us, I wouldn’t have been able to hear him. But his words were loud and clear. His sister, the one I reduced to a pile of flesh, blood, and bone, was the woman with immense strength that rivaled any I had ever witnessed. That led me to believe that this man in front of me, her brother, had his own gift that could just as easily kill me if I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t have to see it to know it.
Before I could do anything else, his head jerked back, and thick black smoke erupted from his throat with a high-pitched scream. It swirled around me, blanketing me in deep shadows. I couldn’t see anything. Not even my own hand in front of my face. Panic clogged my throat and threatened to choke me, the only sound now the shrieking of the funnel of black around me. Clasping my hands over my ears to stifle it, I cried out. The energy of my abilit
y fluttered inside of my chest, licking at my heart as the heat began to build, so hot I almost felt like my insides were burning.
A punch came out of nowhere, landing at my right temple. I nearly lost my footing as I stumbled a few steps to the side, another blow striking me on the opposite side. This couldn’t let this continue. I had to fight back or die, just like he wanted. I steadied myself in the darkness of the funnel and closed my eyes, trying to focus on the sounds around me, blocking out the screeching winds.
In the background, I could hear Ryder’s cries.
“Mila! Mila!”
They were mirrored by Ajax’s who had been scouting the portion of the forest I now stood in. Underneath their shouts, I heard something else. Footsteps through the soft greenery. Then they stopped and another, much more subtle sound, came forth. A slight whoosh of air. A closed fist sliced through the air. Another blow came while I was blind and nearly at my weakest without my sight. My power worked with the ability to see and to focus on my target. I couldn’t do that, but I hoped, with the locus of the sounds he made that I zoned in on, I wouldn’t need to see him to hurt him.
My energy concentrated in my chest, searing heat almost hot enough to sizzle my insides, flowed out toward my hands so I could target the man outside of the swirling smoke. I shot my hands out to the side and forced the power out in a blast so strong it broke the smoke apart, containing it in erratic streams of shimmering shields. With a singular thought, I watched his eyes widen, and the force fields around us converged into a billowing cloud of shimmering black. It shot into him, into his mouth and down his throat in a rush. He screamed in pure agony, and his feet left the ground. There was a sickening wet sound, but I couldn’t see what caused it. In a matter of seconds, he cried out again as the last bit of what he unleashed pushed its way back into his body. It was only then I saw what I had done.
Not only had I forced his power back into him, but the force of it caused his body to become impaled on a nearby tree, a thick branch soaked and dripped with tissue and blood. Eyes dead.
My power snapped back into me, and I fell to my knees, not because of the amount of power I had just expended, but because of the death that seemed to follow me. I looked to the ground at my knees and angry, hot tears burned my eyes. All sounds of war seemed to drift away, muffled by the rushed beating of my heart and the blood in my ears. Strong hands gripped my arms, and a large body dropped in front of me. My gaze snapped up to meet alarmingly wide brown orbs framed by dark skin.
“Come one, we’ve got to move,” Jameson urged me. “You’ve got to get up. Snap out of it.”
With his words, that was when the sounds came crashing back into my awareness, only muffled in the right ear per usual since my ear drum was shattered. The whizz of bullets, gunfire, the whistle of air from missiles, as well as terrified and agonized screams split the atmosphere. Even the radio chatter of the walkie-talkie strapped to his hip.
“Jameson, you find her?” Ajax yelled as he from behind the large man.
“Yup, I got her. Radio Ryder. We need to fall back to the Paradigm. From the chatter, it sounds like they need us,” Jameson shouted back in reply.
My attention snapped to Jameson at the mention of Ryder’s name.
“Where is he?”
“He’s coming, but we’ve got to move,” Ajax said, coming into view just past Jameson’s shoulder.
I nodded and came to stand along with Jameson who gripped my forearm and turned me back in the direction of the Fallen Paradigm. I pulled my arm away from his grip and pulled out one of my handguns, turning off the safety and keeping it pointed safely at the ground until I needed it.
“All right, let’s go.” Jameson pushed.
He led the way, with me in the middle, and Ajax following close at my back. One of King’s men came at us from the side, headed right toward me, but Ajax aimed his gun and put a bullet right between his eyes without stopping. No hesitation.
Leaves and branches whipped us as we ran and, when we had barely broken through the trees, I knew there was no way many of us would make it out of this attack alive. The Paradigm’s once pristine and immaculate building was crumbling on one side while it looked as if it had been blackened with a torch on the other. Gray and black smoke billowed from the portion of it that had been obliterated, and debris was scattered all over the ground, being trampled by any human or Special that had made it out before the damage was inflicted. I saw my mother in the distance, fighting so hard that sweat has drenched her blonde hair. Julius was close by with Cecilia at his back, but Gaia was nowhere to be seen. That made my heart slam into my throat with terror.
I could even make out both Doctor Aserov and Devi in the fray of bodies.
A growl sounded from our left and then, out of nowhere, a massive body of a man covered in patches of white fur slammed into Jameson. Ajax grabbed his gun and took off toward Jameson’s struggling form and the shifter on top of him attempting to shred him into pieces.
Chapter
TWENTY-TWO
“Go, Mila, go!”
I hesitated, but then Ajax aimed his gun at the monster. I turned away, ran toward the skirmish. It was all I knew to do. To help save us, I couldn’t run away. Not now. Not ever. But it was all starting to look far too familiar. It didn’t stop what had to be done.
A soldier moved toward me, a human soldier. I could tell by the way he moved. Sure of himself, but also hesitant because he may be approaching someone with an advantage over him. Of course, he had to know who I was. King had to have plastered my photo everywhere, making absolutely certain his people who knew what I looked like. I wouldn’t be going easy on him. Not for any reason. He was on King’s side, and that warranted zero mercy. He was in front of me in a matter of milliseconds, his clenched fist aimed at my face. Vigor flared inside me and warmth flooded into my hands, my body knowing exactly what to do while still offering me control of what I did.
He lunged, trying to land the blow, but I avoided it easily and hit back. My shield-enforced punch hit him squarely in the jaw. There was a loud crack as the bone broke and he flew, then slammed into the ground. He was on his feet quickly, his jaw dropping from where I had shattered it, but it seemed like the pain didn’t faze him. I would have to end this. I would have to kill him. I had a feeling that King had done something to this man so he would keep fighting no matter what injury he sustained and the fight would only end with his death. I took the final steps before I stood in front of him, poured more power into my body, and reached out to take the man’s throat in both hands. Squeezing, I focused onto the cells in his body and then down to their basic building blocks like I had many times before. It happened faster this time. I wasn’t sure if it was because I had learned some semblance of control or because of the skin-on skin-contact.
The atoms fizzed in my mind and then, the more I focused, they began to vibrate and move together. I felt the heat inside my body and coming from the soldier’s skin as I held onto him. The flesh where mine met his began to turn red, blistering. He screamed in pain. His fingernails dug into my hands and wrists while he tried to make me release him from my grip.
The chain reaction started after barely a second of friction and, because of the blaze that started under my fingers, I had to let him go. He thudded to the ground, but it wasn’t long before I heard another sound. The sound of a shot, a slight whistle of plastic slicing through the air, and then a spurt and a hiss.
It was a sound I had heard before, but only a few times.
Turning only my head, Julius stood behind me with his hand outstretched hand the putrid green acid he projected dripping from his open flesh. A spent and nearly dissolved tranquilizer dart lay on the ground, covered in the same liquid.
“Hey,” he greeted breathlessly with a smirk.
“Hey,” I laughed. “How about we stop this now, huh?”
“Oh, Hel
l yeah,” he replied.
Animal cries of war and frenzy approached us, and I turned just in time to meet the rage-filled face of another soldier with a rifle in his hand. He didn’t seem intent on using it the way it was intended. He was far too close for that now. He raised it above his head, and I was certain the butt of the rifle was intended for my skull. I poured my power into my hand and imagined the rifle leaving his hands, and it did what I told it to, taken up by my invisible hands and tossed through the air toward the forest.
We fought for our lives, backs pressed together while everyone did the same. My blows were a mixture of weakened punches and kicks, and energy enforced hits that crippled nearly anyone that came to meet me. I didn’t need the shielded hits for the human soldiers, just the Special soldiers.
Finally, a slim and lean-muscled man stalked toward me, grinning from ear to ear like I was a meal to be devoured. I lashed out, my fist and forearm covered in the glimmering shield of my ability, and was stopped short. The soldier grabbed my wrist with a feral shout and attempted to turn me into an ice-sculpture. The cold began on the surface of my skin, quickly moving down deep within my bones and muscles. It was blindingly painful and cold like a blizzard had unleashed inside my veins. I fell to my knees and screamed. I was barely able to concentrate on building my power, and it seemed not to be able to move past the point of blinding pain.
The blazing fire inside rushed into my other arm and concentrated in my palm. I felt the cells and atoms move inside of me to create it as a way to save myself, something I hadn’t been certain I could do until I strangled the other man with my searing hands. Placing my palm against his hand, I let it pour into him with a striking ferocity, a shrill battle cry leaving my lips as I came to stand before him instead of cower.
The Scorned (The Permutation Archives Book 3) Page 25