“I’ll be outside too.” Nova started after him.
“Nova,” Reese said, and the girl paused. “Thanks for getting the supplies. However you got them.”
The girl shrugged uncomfortably. “Like I said, I was already there.”
“No, you weren’t. It was a brave and stupid thing you did.”
One side of Nova’s mouth quirked upward in a half smile. “Looks like we all did stupid stuff today.” She took a few more steps and then paused to ask, “How are we going to get Dani back?”
Reese shook her head. “I don’t know. Her T-link is completely dead, so she probably disabled it. We’ll have to trace her the hard way.”
“Her friends in Newcali might be able to help.”
“Maybe. But we’ve turned off the T-links for now. Special Forces might be able to track us through her set if we use them.”
“Great, one more thing to worry about.” With a sigh, Nova disappeared through the door.
Reese shook Eagle awake and was relieved to see that he was able to sit up without pain. His color wasn’t any better, but he hadn’t rested long.
“We have to go,” she said. “You think you can walk?”
“Yeah. I’m fine.” He gave her a smile that almost held his usual humor. “I could use a cup of brew.”
Reese reached for a red hypo in her pack. “A stim will give you a boost.” She held it against his arm.
“Thanks.”
He’d just put on his vest, hastily wiped down with a rag, and his shirt when Thane and Silas rushed into the room. “You have to go now,” Silas ordered. “They’ve tracked a suspicious shuttle to this street.”
Reese didn’t ask how he knew.
“Follow my son. We have someone waiting. You’ll go by car some of the way, and then by tunnels.” He waved at them, panic in his motions. “Hurry!”
Reese shouldered the two overloaded supply bags and ran to the door. Eagle followed almost as quickly, the stimulant she’d given him apparently kicking in. She hoped it wasn’t masking his symptoms, though. She didn’t like his color.
On the porch, Jaxon was already on his feet, and his hands reached for one of the bags. Wordlessly, they ran across the neighbor’s yard, and into the yard of the house behind where a battered yellow car waited in the front. It was an old model, more round than sleek like the tetrahedron shuttles. It was too small to fit them all, but somehow Reese, Jaxon, and Eagle pushed into the back seat and Nova sat half on top of Thane in the passenger seat in the front. Reese noted that on the dashboard where an onboard Teev might have once been, there was now only a gaping hole.
The driver, a rotund, cleanshaven man with a shaved head, sped away. “The cameras have all failed here, but only for three more minutes until they reset,” he said as they careened around a corner, knocking Reese painfully against the door.
More turns and then an abrupt stop. Houses reached in every direction except to their right, where a thick group of trees jutted from the earth, looking more like dangerous green spikes than the things of beauty Reese had noted earlier.
“Hurry!” the driver barked. “One minute!”
They tumbled from their cramped confines, bumping and hitting into each other, and followed Thane into the woods. Behind them, the yellow car sped away. Thane ran on a narrow path through the trees and brush at full speed, and it was hard to keep up with the heavy bags. Eagle was wheezing. But even when the road was no longer visible, Thane didn’t stop.
Abruptly, he disappeared in front of them. There one minute and sinking and gone the next. Nova did the same. Reese hurtled after them down a brush-covered slope. She could see the others now, descending in front of her. She dared a backward glance to make sure Eagle and Jaxon were keeping up. She could no longer see the woods except for the tops of some trees and the brush in this indentation.
Thane stopped and began clearing away a mound of branches, vines, and brush that hid an opening. Inside the dark hole was a set of crumbled stairs, also covered in leaves and twigs. This must be one of the tunnels Silas had talked about.
Once inside, Thane pulled back the covering over the opening and turned on a handheld light before leading them into the increasing darkness. Then he jumped down from a cement platform to where four metal lines dug into the ground, partially covered by dirt and debris.
“It’s like El Cerebro’s underground.” Nova sounded almost happy.
Thane laughed easily. “Yeah. In fact, it was him who sent us the plans and helped us find it. These tunnels are so old, even the CORE has forgotten them. They’ve saved hundreds of lives. Come on. We don’t want to miss our next contact.”
He led them through the tunnel almost at a run, occasionally turning at intersections, first one way and then the next, as if his memory never faltered. But Reese began noticing symbols on some of the walls they passed, though she hadn’t figured out which he was following.
Thane finally came to a stop, his chest heaving with effort, “I’m sorry, but this is where I need to blindfold you. We wouldn’t be too bad off if this tunnel was discovered, but where we go next . . .” His voice held a plea, and though Reese had noticed the bulk of a gun at his waist under the back of his shirt, he had to know he wouldn’t stand a chance against them. His only choice would be to refuse to lead them.
“We could make you show us,” Nova said.
His chin jutted out, and his smile vanished. “I’d just lead you around until our contact left. I’m telling you that now because I don’t think you’re here to hurt us.”
“Do it,” Jaxon said.
Nova sighed and turned her back to the boy. Thane took a length of cloth from the bag he carried and tied it over her eyes, suddenly all gangly arms and extra thumbs. Reese hid a smile. Obviously, he liked the girl.
When they were all securely blindfolded, Thane gave them a rope to hold onto and was careful about rounding corners and deviating around debris. He could have no way of knowing that Eagle would be able to map the direction in his 3D brain simply by calculating the steps he took. It might help them later if they needed somewhere to hide out.
“This has to be how Kentley got away,” Reese said in a low voice to Jaxon. “Through a tunnel like this one.”
“That’s my guess. They probably all intersect.” Reese tried to peer under the blindfold, but the cloth was tight, and with Thane’s light the only one in the tunnel, she couldn’t make out anything. “You think it’s wise to trust this kid? He could lead us into a trap.”
“El Cerebro has a lot of pull with these people, regardless of what Silas said, or they wouldn’t have helped us at all. They won’t risk his retaliation. I think they’re just trying to protect themselves. Besides, he’s an illegal child, remember? He won’t be going anywhere near enforcers.”
Reese hoped he was right.
The walking wasn’t difficult, and Reese felt they made good time considering the blindfolds. But they were unnaturally close, and sketches from the others’ minds pressed in on her. More moments in time that she’d have to draw. From Nova she caught a glimpse of a boy from the Underground and her uncle in both his identities. From Eagle a snatch of the 3D mental map he was creating that would challenge her artistic skills, and from Thane a thought of Nova sitting next to him. Only Jaxon’s mind didn’t send her a sketch, for which she was grateful. She hoped he wouldn’t have a premonition while they were in the tunnels, because she’d see an image of that for sure, and just thinking about the one she still needed to draw of the sick children made her chest ache.
After about thirty minutes, light began filtering in through the edges of her blindfold and their path angled steeply upward. Within seconds Reese could feel wind on her face, and it was all she could do not to rip off the blindfold and pull her gun.
“Are we out?” Nova demanded.
“Just a minute,” Thane said. They tramped on, tripping over debris. The woods or an empty zone, Reese thought. She sniffed, but it didn’t smell like the woods. The aroma was
closer to dust, though the wind might carry the hint of a sea breeze.
She brought a finger up to tug at the blindfold, but Thane chose that moment to stop. “Okay, you can take them off,” he said.
“I can’t, you half-witted, punk bucket fringer!” Nova retorted. “You tied it too tight.”
“I’ll get it,” came Thane’s hurried voice. Then, “Hey, watch it with that knife!”
Reese had to cut her blindfold off too. She looked around with relief. In every direction lay mounds of rubble, the skeleton of some buildings reaching as high as twenty stories into the air. The occasional hardy weed stuck through the broken glass, shattered concrete, and twisted metal that covered the ground. Reese shivered. An empty zone, an area that marked the border between the inhabited CORE Territories and the desolation zones where the radiation was deadly.
“Now what?” Nova sounded angry. Her hair had come loose from its clip and the curls were everywhere, growing more ratted each second, tangled by the wind. Her yellow blouse was stained.
“Now is a good time to drink water. We’re almost there.” Thane sat on a large slab of broken concrete. “I have a little if you need it.”
“I thought we were meeting someone,” Nova sat in the rubble where she was standing, while the rest of them moved to large pieces of concrete nearby.
“Sorry. I lied.” Thane took a swig from a water skin.
“Big surprise,” Nova muttered, only half under her breath.
Thane ignored her disdain. “We’ve still got a bit of a walk.”
Jaxon passed around a water skin from one of the bags Nova had rescued. Reese took a long drink, a trickle escaping to run down her neck, and tossed it back to him. She wished she could pour the rest over her head, but it wouldn’t pay to start wasting it now.
“Anyone want food?” Nova dumped out her own bag, sending a slew of readymeals over the ground.
“Where’d you get those?” Thane growled suspiciously.
“Not from your house,” Nova retorted, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”
No. Reese was positive the girl had emptied the readymeal dispenser at the C-lodge.
“I wasn’t thinking anything.” Thane cocked his head, staring at her as if seeing her for the first time. “Your hair is different now.”
“What of it?” Nova asked with a little sneer. Apparently, she was a lot more upset about the blindfold than any of them. Reese was glad that no new sketches came to her mind.
“Reminds me of someone.” Thane shrugged and looked away.
“I’ll have one of those,” Eagle said to Nova, and she tossed him a readymeal. They weren’t as good cold but safely edible. Eagle was still pale and his face drawn. They’d have to give him more pain meds soon.
Reese gulped down a readymeal herself, one eye on the empty wasteland around them. When a noise alerted her, she pulled her gun and came swiftly to her feet.
“Easy,” Thane said. “There’s no one out here. It’s just an animal.”
How close were they to the South Desolation Zone? That animal might well turn out to be a monster.
“Let’s move,” Thane said.
He started out quickly, not looking back to see if they followed. Maybe he was even hoping they’d get lost. Nova shoved her food back in her pack, and Reese rose and started after them, checking behind her to see if Eagle was keeping up.
What she saw was Jaxon curled up on the ground beyond Eagle, obviously in the throes of a premonition. Reese hurried back. “Go ahead,” she told Eagle. “We’ll catch up.”
But Jaxon held up his hand as she approached, warning her to stop, probably trying to spare her from his vision. She saw it anyway, though she was still three meters away. Not the sick children, as she expected, but two people wrapped in each other’s arms, the telltale flush of passion on their faces.
Her face. And Jaxon’s.
She stumbled, catching herself on a bar of rusty iron that jutted from a huge piece of broken concrete. The wind still whipping her hair did nothing to ease the heat crashing over her. Just that fast, the sketch was gone, leaving her hot and breathless and yearning.
Jaxon dragged himself to his feet, concern on his face. His eyes ran over her, the gaze feeling too intimate after what she’d glimpsed. “You okay?” he asked. An odd note in his voice told her he was asking more, that he was wondering if she’d experienced a sketch of what he’d seen. She knew by the lack of surprise in his expression that it wasn’t the first time he’d had this vision.
If his visions always came true, where did it leave her? She felt as if she’d already cheated on Alex, or maybe being with Alex was cheating on Jaxon. Whatever it meant, she couldn’t deal with it right now. She didn’t even know how she felt about it, except angry that he hadn’t told her before.
“You’re the one who doesn’t look okay,” she said, leaving the sting in her voice. “You obviously had a premonition. You want to tell me what you saw?”
He took a step toward her, his face open and trusting. For a moment, she thought he might tell her the truth, but he shook his head. “You don’t need another sketch bothering you. You’re stumbling around as it is. If I tell you, you might see it.”
As he spoke, her fingers itched to draw. No, they burned to draw. All the sketches she’d glimpsed today. Sourness scorched her throat. She bent over and vomited onto the rubble.
Jaxon put his arm around her. “Come on. Thane said it’s not far. When we get there, you can start drawing.”
Reese stifled a snort, not knowing which of them was worse off. They were both hobbling like invalids. Would it pass? Or was this only the beginning of the madness that eventually killed all those with abilities?
Chapter 10
DANI SAT IN a table seat on the sky train, ignoring the man opposite her as she stared out the window. Her hands were cuffed together on the table, her good arm dangling off the edge, while her wounded right arm rested on the flat surface between them, blood dripping through the hasty bandage they’d tied around it. Just a flesh wound, really, and her body would heal in a few days, but for now it ached more than she’d admit even to herself. She’d been clumsy, but it had taken a lot of effort not to break all their necks.
“Talk, fringer whore,” growled one of the two Special Forces guards who stood next to the table, their assault rifles at the ready. She didn’t respond. He was obviously still angry that she’d thrown him against a building.
It was an insult, really, sending only the three enforcers to escort her to Estlantic, but one of the six Special Forces had died in the shootout, and one would probably succumb soon. That meant only one enforcer from Special Forces remained to rally the local divisions to find her crew, leaving these three pus lickers to watch her. They were really no threat if she’d wanted to escape, at least not on a sky train with so many exits.
“Enforcer Gedet,” growled the seated man. “I got this.”
Gedet ignored him and plopped himself next to Dani, shoving her over to make room. “What was your goal?” he demanded. “How do you know Sam Kentley? Where did he go?”
Ah, so they haven’t caught up to Kentley. That meant the others must have succeeded in their mission. She only hoped they were smart enough to power down their T-links. She’d damaged hers before being captured, but no doubt the pus bags would be able to fix it eventually. As long as the units were linked, there was a risk they could use hers to track them. But Reese and Jaxon were smart. Always had been. She could quit worrying about them and focus on her current goal—freeing her brother and getting him back to Newcali before the Special Forces understood that it wasn’t only information about Newcali she was protecting.
Whatever happened, she’d free Tauri, even if she didn’t make it out alive. Funny that she could be so attached to a brother she hadn’t known existed until much later in her life, but Tauri was everything to her. She loved him above the colonists she’d saved, even the babies she bought from the mothers at Colony 6 who unknowingly sacrific
ed their children to a life of slavery in exchange for extra rations.
In fact, Tauri’s very existence was nothing short of a miracle. Their father, who was supposed to have been seven months dead but was somehow alive, had come back to their tiny house in Colony 6. Dani had awakened in the bed she’d shared with her mother to find them kissing and clinging to one another.
“I’ll come back for her next,” he’d whispered in the dark room.
“No!” Her mother gave a little sob, clutching his hands as if to prevent him from leaving. “What if you can’t? That’s why we agreed she’d go first. It’s too big a risk.”
Daddy shook his head, his hand caressing the large bulge of her mother’s stomach. “Things are different now. It’s safer to take the baby out while he’s still inside. A few months won’t matter for Dani. My mother will take care of her.”
“Can’t the fringers make room? She’s so little.”
“There’s no room. One slight variation and everyone will be caught.”
For a long moment her mother sounded as if she were choking on her tears. Then she straightened her shoulders. “Okay.” She noticed Dani watching them and bent to hug her, “Be brave, my little girl. I love you.”
Daddy also tried to hug her, his eyes shimmering with moisture in the pale light, but Dani had cringed away from him. He was too strange. He was supposed to be dead.
“I’ll come back for you,” he promised.
Dani had stared without a response. Then he took her mother away.
Forever.
The next day Dani turned six. She told only one person about that night—her crotchety old gran, who had told her it was a dream. That her mother hadn’t run away but had died like her father. For months Dani wondered if the strange growth in her mother’s tummy had caused her death. After the first year, it didn’t really matter to Dani because if it hadn’t been a dream, they had lied and left her. They were lumpers, fringer-lovers, and she didn’t need or want them. She didn’t need or want anyone, not even her crew, at least not on an emotional level.
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