“Look, the trees!” Reese said, redirecting his attention to the line of scraggly trees that bordered the empty zone. “We’re almost there.”
Before they could move forward, several explosions reached their ears, one after the other, then a pause and another blast. Definitely in the empty zone, and fairly close. Kentley cringed momentarily before sprinting for the trees. Jaxon and Reese ran after him. The distance was longer than Jaxon expected, and he felt exposed, as if at any moment a drone would find them. When they finally did reach the sparse shade of the trees, he felt immediately safer, though he knew there was no safety until they’d entered the tunnels.
“This way.” The doctor waved them to a path on the right before hurrying away. Maybe he was anxious to see if his children had made it inside and were waiting, but Jaxon suspected he was driven mostly by fear. Jaxon couldn’t blame him.
“Should we check out the explosion?” Reese asked.
“Let’s look in the tunnels first.”
She nodded and they continued onward. When they reached the top of the entrance, the doctor was already coming back up the sloping ground, his eyes reddened. “They’re not inside.” He glanced fearfully around them. “What do we do now?”
Jaxon’s brain felt steeped in ice. He should be able to consider their next move, but all at once he was riveted to the spot. Almost as if his body was trying to show him a premonition but was simply too tired to follow through. But somehow he knew he couldn’t leave this place, just as he’d known in the cave when enforcers were coming around each bend. Only then, the glimpses he’d seen had been clear and certain. Now everything was hazy. He felt weak and sick.
Maybe it was the madness.
“We should probably wait inside,” Reese began.
“No,” Jaxon said. “I feel . . . we have to stay here.”
“We can’t.” Kentley shook his head vigorously. “They’re either inside already, deeper in the tunnels. Or they’re gone.” He turned to go, but Reese clamped a hand on his shoulder.
“We can wait for a few minutes,” she said.
More than those few minutes slid by as Jaxon began to doubt himself. He had orders to save the doctor. He could do that now, if he could make himself move. His feet refused to obey.
“Take him to the tunnels,” he told Reese finally. “You can’t wait any longer.”
“If you think I’m leaving you, you’re . . .” She trailed off, her gaze going to a point beyond Jaxon.
Her surprise freed his limbs. He turned and there was Eagle, emerging from the trees, striding like a man with a purpose, a strong man who wouldn’t yield. Blood ran down one cheek, and the rest of his face and hair were caked with dirt and sweat. He carried one end of a stretcher. With him was a wild-haired Nova, the two children, Debs, and another man Jaxon vaguely recognized as a guard at the house. All of them looked stunned and beaten, especially the guard, who struggled to carry the other end of the stretcher. Jaxon suspected he only moved forward because Eagle pulled him.
Kentley let out a coarse cry, dropped his bag, and leapt at Nova, taking the little girl from her. The little boy ran to meet him, and Kentley fell to his knees as he encircled the children, crushing them to his chest. His sobs came roughly.
While Reese took up a guard position, Jaxon went to Eagle. “Glad to see you. We were worried when we saw the house had been burnt out.”
“We almost didn’t make it.” His eyes were hidden as usual by his black glasses, but his voice hinted at unspeakable horrors like the ones that haunted Jaxon after his time in the cave.
Jaxon’s gaze fell to the stretcher where Thane sprawled unmoving, too pale to be simply sleeping. “No,” Jaxon said. A weight descended on him that threatened to crush his chest. “Is he . . .?”
Without waiting for Eagle’s response, Jaxon whirled and grabbed Kentley by the back of his shirt, hauling him to his feet, despite the protests of the children. “Take a look at Thane.” He shoved the doctor toward the stretcher.
“It’s too late,” Eagle said, as he and the fringer guard gently lowered Thane to the ground. “We gave him a stim and oxygen, but he wouldn’t revive.”
Jaxon glanced at Nova, whose face tightened as she looked away. That told him everything.
“We’d better get inside the tunnels,” Reese said. “We’re too exposed out here.”
Ignoring her, Kentley knelt next to Thane, the children clutching at his waist, and put his hand on Thane’s chest. “How long’s he been gone?”
“Fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds,” Eagle said in a dead-sounding monotone.
“Then it might not be too late.” With one hand on Thane, the doctor motioned for his bag. “I need the red hypo. Then the green. Hurry.”
Jaxon dived for the bag, riffling through the contents. He shoved a hypo at the doctor, who stabbed it into Thane’s heart.
“What are you doing?” Nova demanded.
“I’m getting his heart beating. Sometimes they’ll wake.”
“There’ll be too much damage,” Nova said. “He’ll be a vegetable like after medical enhancement. Or worse.”
Thane’s body jerked, and he started to breathe. Someone gasped—or maybe they all did.
“I don’t have time to explain,” the doctor said, “but tissue death occurs after the circulation is restored, not before, and I sometimes can fix it because I see where to put the medication. If you gave him stim, that adds time, even if it doesn’t seem to work.”
He was touching Thane’s head now, the other hand doing something to the green hypo. An impossibly thin needle popped out of the end.
He pressed it against the right side of Thane’s skull, and the hypo began whirring, digging itself into the bone. When it stopped, Kentley pressed in the medication.
Everyone stood in fascination as Kentley drilled ten more micro holes in Thane’s head, injecting medication and stopping them with a silicone plug. “To prevent infection,” he said.
When he finished, they all stared down at Thane. He was breathing and his heart beat out a steady rhythm, but he didn’t open his eyes.
“You were too late,” Nova said bitterly. Jaxon understood that losing hope was worse than never having it.
“Maybe.” The doctor leaned back. “He may just be in a temporary coma.” He hesitated before adding, “Whatever his condition . . . if he doesn’t awake, the fringers here need his organs. They don’t have the luxury of hospitals or mechanical implants.”
Nova launched herself at Kentley. “You half-witted pus licker!” she shouted. “You, saucebag, warthog-faced fringer!”
Jaxon grabbed her an instant before her hooked fingers reached the doctor. He held her tightly, and she struggled against him, her arms flailing. “Calm down, Nova,” he whispered in her ear. “You have to calm down.”
“I don’t have to do anything except hurt this stinking lumper!” She pushed at Jaxon, trying to get away. “He made Thane into a . . . thing! That’s worse than death. Thane wouldn’t have wanted it.” She struggled furiously against Jaxon’s arms, but he held on.
He became aware of Reese urging the others on to the tunnels without them. “Jaxon and I’ll catch up to you with Nova in a bit,” she promised.
Kentley scooped up both his children and led the way. Eagle and Namon followed with Thane on the stretcher, and Debs cast a pitying glance at Nova as she hurried after them. Jaxon held the girl’s rigid figure until she went limp and started sobbing. He spat out curly hair that had lodged in his mouth.
Reese moved closer then, her hand going to Nova’s arm. “I’m sorry. I really am. It’s a terrible thing that happened, but we really need you right now. We have to get into the tunnels and contact your uncle. We can still help Dani. But they have a big jump on us, and she’ll be in New York by morning. We can’t stop now. We need her and her friends in Newcali to fix the CORE.”
Nova went utterly still, so still Jaxon couldn’t even feel her breathing. Then she pulled herself away from him without
looking at either of them and hurried down to the tunnel entrance.
Reese surveyed the area with a sigh. Her hands were shaking, and Jaxon knew she’d received a sketch from Nova. That meant whatever effect the doctor had on her was also wearing off.
“Even with what happened to the boy, we were lucky,” she said.
“I know.” But losing a child meant it wasn’t a win of any kind. One more nightmare to add to the others plaguing them.
They met the others inside the tunnel, where they debated what to do. Debs and Namon refused to take them to their main hideout, and after what had happened, Jaxon didn’t blame them.
“Just take us to another entrance,” Jaxon said. “One far enough away from here that it won’t be suspect if we suddenly appear.”
Debs and Namon agreed, but before they arrived at their destination, two fringers appeared and relieved Eagle and Namon of their burden. Jaxon had no idea how they’d known where to find them, but he didn’t ask.
“Just get him there and keep him warm,” Kentley told them. “Tell Ennah what I did. She’ll know what to do for him. I’ll come and visit when I can.”
Namon hugged his mother. Then with a hard stare at the doctor, he disappeared with the fringers.
Debs continued on, her shoulders slightly hunched now. When they reached their destination, everyone stood by the exit while Jaxon emerged far enough to get a signal to contact Brogan on Nova’s iTeev.
A response in the form of coordinates came back quickly. “Can you get us here? I told him we’re in the tunnels, so I think it’s another entrance.” Jaxon showed Eagle the screen.
Eagle nodded. “We might have to take a few odd turns, or backtrack at dead ends, but we can find it.”
“Okay then,” Debs said. “Good luck.”
“What?” Dr. Kentley’s head swung toward her, the front part of his hair hanging into his eyes. “You have to come with us. It’s not safe here.”
“Come with us, Debs,” added the little boy. “We need you. Who will take care of us?”
The girl simply stared at her with wide, pleading eyes.
Tears rolled down Debs weathered cheeks, but in the end, she shook her head. “My place is with my son. I know he’s grown, but Namon still needs me.” With a kiss to each child, she hurried away and didn’t look back.
Jaxon watched her fade into the darkness. She’d probably raised these kids every bit as much as the doctor had, but losing her home and leaving her son was apparently more than she was willing to endure even for the love of these two young ones. His hatred of the CORE grew.
“We’ll be okay,” Kentley whispered through the children’s quiet sobs.
Jaxon was going to make sure it was one promise he kept.
Chapter 17
REESE FELT MORE like herself after a sonic cleansing and changing into a fresh enforcer uniform. She’d drawn all the sketches she’d seen over the day, even those she didn’t feel compelled to put on paper, presumably because of Kentley’s influence. She drew the sketches mostly to record anything that might turn out to be important but also because she was still feeling a bit jumpy. She theorized that the doctor’s ability might only temporarily lessen her urge to draw the sketches instead of removing it completely.
She took her seat in the C-lodge’s main room with Jaxon, Eagle, and the twins, Lyssa and Lyra. Evan Hammer, Brogan, and Kentley talked quietly near a bedroom door, where Kentley’s children were sleeping. Nova had commandeered one of the other rooms, and Reese hoped she was also asleep. She hadn’t spoken a word since Thane’s strange revival.
After Nova’s communication about Dani, Brogan had started immediately for Santoni with the twins and Hammer. As Captain Brogan, he’d offered official assistance to the local enforcer division, which allowed him to comb the streets near the woods in the hopes of providing his team an escape from the city. Brogan himself had met them at the coordinates he’d sent and brought them by shuttle to this C-lodge in nearby Riverton where the others waited. Kentley and the children were traveling under new false CivIDs, but the rest of them were now using their own identities. Reese hoped that meant they were out of immediate danger. Kentley still didn’t know that Brogan was El Cerebro, but he understood the captain was on their side.
Lyssa handed Reese a hot readymeal, and Eagle extended a bag of pretzels one of the twins had brought for him. He was still pale and moved slowly but was obviously recovering from his ordeal in the empty zone, a fact he loudly credited to his favorite snack. Reese was glad someone could joke because it was the only thing easing the tense, unhappy atmosphere.
Brogan said something to Kentley, who nodded and disappeared into the room with his children. Then he and Hammer joined the rest on the couches.
“You’ve done a good job in very hard circumstances,” Brogan began. “I know it wasn’t easy, but somehow you managed to complete your mission and get out safely. Or most of you, anyway.” He paused a moment. “Thank you for taking care of Nova.”
“She helped us too,” Reese said for all of them. “She brought the supplies, and without her iTeev, we would have had to risk turning on Dani’s T-links again to contact you.”
“I’m glad you didn’t. They were tracking the connection within an hour of the confrontation with Special Forces—after they repaired the damage Dani did to her unit. But we can wipe the connection and reboot with another code, so we’ll be able to use them again, if we need to.”
“To go after Dani, you mean,” Jaxon said.
Brogan held up a hand. “We’ll get to that in a minute. First, you might be interested to know that Dr. Kentley has disappeared from the database.”
“Maybe they thought they killed him in the Empty Zone,” Reese suggested.
“Or maybe they realize we’ve got him.” Brogan sat back in his chair, crossing his legs and steepling his fingers over his broad chest. “They would take samples from everyone they killed.” He paused and added, “You should also know that Special Forces came to get the men you arrested at the fountain.”
Jaxon snorted. “That’s good for us. We don’t have time to deal with crazies like that, even if he was right in everything he was saying.”
“True.” Brogan uncrossed his legs and leaned forward abruptly. “But it concerns me that they were so quick in taking our prisoners. That means they have Special Forces in or near Amarillo City. They were at our division before I could question any of the prisoners.”
“What do you think it means?” Eagle asked slowly.
Brogan’s frown made him look menacing. “I’m not sure, but I’m hoping it doesn’t mean they don’t trust us. Or that they’re going to become more active in Dallastar. I’m only telling you so that you’re aware our division is being monitored.”
“We also know Special Forces has been clearing people out of the empty zones in Estlantic,” Jaxon said. “Maybe they’re working their way west.”
“If it comes to it, we’ll leave the underground and fight!” A yearning for vengeance rankled in the young voice. They turned to see Nova standing at the edge of the room.
Brogan shook his head and rose to his feet. “I know we’ve made progress, but we’re not ready for that yet. We don’t have enough weapons, and we certainly don’t have enough people. We need to find out if anyone among the Elite will back us.”
“We don’t need those pus bags,” Nova said. “Newcali will help. I know they will.”
Brogan walked over to her, putting his arm around her. “We’ll talk later, I promise. Can you go lie down?” His tone was firm, and everyone knew the girl had no choice, despite the gentle phrasing. She turned without another word and walked away.
Nova had been angry before, but now there was an added fatality to her actions. Reese missed her stomping and her protests. She worried about this quieter, angrier little girl.
“I thought we were going to try to resolve this without evoking a war,” Jaxon said, when Brogan returned to his seat. “We don’t want to hurt innocent peop
le.”
“That would be the preferred method,” Brogan agreed, “but we may need to prepare for more. There may be no way except another Breakdown.”
Silence met his comment. Reese felt they were on a sky train, heading for a break in the line with no way to bail out. The CORE had been created to prevent another Breakdown, and Brogan’s words went against everything they’d ever been taught.
“But—” Jaxon began.
Brogan overrode the protest with a near growl. “I will never accept that some people are disposable. People like those children who died in the empty zone today, or the three hundred thousand in the colonies. If any of you are not willing to go the distance, you need to let me know now.”
He waited. They all waited.
But Reese was all in. Even if she had a true choice, even if she didn’t know Brogan would kill them in order to maintain the secrecy of the underground, she wouldn’t leave.
Neither would the others.
“What’s the plan for Dani?” she asked. “They already have most of the day on us. There’s no way we could beat them to HED, even if her fringers lent us one of their hovers.”
Hammer gave them a wry grin from his seat next to Lyra. This evening the large man’s long black hair was loose instead of in its customary ponytail, reminding Reese of an ancient movie she’d seen on the history feed. “Believe me, we thought of asking for a hover, but it would be useless anyway. We’ve lost a lot of pre-Breakdown tech, but Estlantic has heavy drone patrol along most of their inhabited borders. There are only a few places we’d be able to approach through the empty zones, and none of them are near your final destination.”
“That means you’ll have to go by sky train,” Brogan said. “Hammer has given you all a cover story for why you will be in New York. Reese, Jaxon, and Eagle will be attending a memorial of a Special Forces team supervisor they all worked with or knew during the past ten years. It will be held late tomorrow afternoon at HED.”
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