XGeneration (Book 6): Greatest Good

by Brad Magnarella

  “I was listening, four-eyes. Up to the part where my ass was getting hung out to dry.”

  “But you did it just a few days ago,” Janis insisted. “You went to Star’s rally without anyone knowing. If Jesse hadn’t shown up, Kilmer and Steel would never have missed you.”

  “Yeah, and in case you forgot, I got hit with probation and a big, fat fine. You think I’m putting my next paycheck on the line for you?”

  “This isn’t just about me and Scott,” Janis said. “It’s about all of us. You, too.”

  “So how’d I draw the short straw? What about that blurring thing you can do?”

  “Even if Scott and I weren’t already being watched like hawks, the motion sensors would nab us. The sensors can’t keep up with your speed. You know that. It’s how you left the neighborhood the other day.”

  Creed scowled as he rose and stalked past them, his open shirt revealing a lean, sunken chest. Without a word, he disappeared into his bathroom and closed the door. The exhaust fan went on.

  “Come on, Creed!” Scott shouted.

  “How the hell did you get in here, anyway?” he asked above the noise.

  “Your elevator,” Janis called back.

  “Since you know the way so well, how about turning around and getting back on it?” He could then be heard grumbling, “Busting into my room and messing with my stereo…”

  “Is it money you’re after?” Scott asked, his throat tightening with frustration. “We could talk about that.”

  “Shit. You can’t afford me.”

  Scott raised a fist to pound the door but then relented and rested his head against it. “He’s not gonna budge on this, is he?”

  Janis sighed and shook her head.

  “What do I do with these, then?” Scott held up the map and crude schematic of Mr. Shine’s house. He’d drawn them at Janis’s back while she pled with Creed. They were meant to assist him in locating and retrieving the item.

  Or had been.

  Scott looked around Creed’s room, which was pretty much what he’d imagined it would be like: posters of metal bands plastering the walls, clothes strewn across every conceivable surface, a low, stale odor of cigarettes. Janis moved a stack of cassette tapes from the top of Creed’s stereo and placed them on a box speaker where more tapes were piled.

  “How about there,” she said, indicating the cleared space.

  “You know, I could try hacking the security perimeter,” Scott said as he set the map and schematic down. “Once we’re past it, you blur us and—”

  “And then we’re on foot,” Janis interrupted. “And Mr. Shine’s house is clear across town. Plus, I wasn’t exaggerating to Creed earlier. Agent Steel has a security detail on us. The second we get out, they’ll be all over us. I draw the line at fighting Steel’s team. They’re just following orders. ”

  Scott nodded. That was his line as well. To hide his disappointment, he removed his glasses and began cleaning the lenses with his shirt tail. He cocked his head toward the bathroom door.

  “So what does that leave? Threatening him?”

  “Naw. The more we push, the more he’s gonna push back.” She rubbed his arm. “Told you it was a long shot.”

  “Can’t a man do his business in peace?” Creed shouted above the fan. “Jesus!”

  “C’mon,” Janis said, leading Scott back into the upstairs hallway.

  The elevator had delivered them into a guest bedroom downstairs, marking the first time Scott had ever set foot inside the Bast home. He pushed his glasses back on and looked around as they walked past a wall of family photos from when Tyler and Creed were kids, their faces wooden and pale. Scott felt a twinge of pity, even for Creed. Their father, a severe-looking man with thick sideburns, had left them years before, he understood.

  At the top of the stairs, Janis reached for the rail and turned. “We’re just going to have to put everything we have into vigilance and defense. That’s our best chance now of altering the—”

  She stopped suddenly, her gaze narrowing past him, and then she screamed.

  The front of his uniform was blood soaked, littered with bits of debris. On closer inspection, Janis saw the debris was human tissue. She rushed toward him in the gray dawn, horror spearing her heart. He had fallen to a sitting position, eyes closed, on the verge of swooning to the ground.

  “Tyler!” she called.

  She gripped his shoulders to keep him upright, but then someone came up behind her and tried to pull her away. She struggled against the new force, her eyes searching Tyler’s face for life.

  Janis! What are you doing?

  Dawn turned to late afternoon, and Janis found herself indoors. She squinted through the dimness to where Tyler was standing in his doorway, at arm’s length. Her hands were still squeezing his shoulders.

  “Janis,” Scott whispered behind her. “It’s all right. Everyone’s all right.”

  You’re having another vision, he said.

  She gasped, heart pounding. “Sorry.” She smoothed the bunched-up flannel at Tyler’s shoulders before letting her hands fall away. “I … I just thought I saw something, that’s all.”

  Uncertainty grew in Tyler’s eyes.

  “I heard your raised voices next door,” he said after a moment. “Is everything cool?”

  As he spoke, Janis kept seeing the pale, blood-specked face from her premonition. She shook her head. “No, Tyler,” she said. “Nothing’s cool right now. I think we all need to talk.”

  Tyler nodded and backed into his room, a cleaner version of Creed’s. He pulled a wooden desk chair out for Janis and signaled for Scott to take the bed. Tyler lowered himself beside him, setting his forearms on his knees. His tired eyes bore a kind of fatalism. Janis racked her brain for what to say.

  Just start at the beginning, Scott counseled her.

  “All right, I’ve been having these premonitions,” she began. “At first they were just a feeling. A sense that one of us was going to … was not going to make it. But lately, the feelings have become visions. The first one happened a few days ago when you and Creed were coming out of Kilmer’s office, and Scott and I were going in. The second happened just now, only more vividly.”

  “It’s me, isn’t it?” Tyler asked.

  “In this possible future I’m seeing…” Her gaze moved to Scott and back. “Yes.”

  Though Tyler gave no outward reaction, Janis felt something flinch inside him. He wasn’t ready to die.

  “But, listen,” she said quickly. “It’s not written in stone, not by any means. Scott and I are doing everything we can to change that future. That’s why we came over to talk to Creed. We thought he could help.”

  “My brother? Help?” For the first time, Tyler’s lips cracked into a smile.

  Janis’s pent-up emotions emerged as a laugh. “Yeah, well.”

  For the next twenty minutes, she and Scott filled him in on the steps they had taken to that point. She told him about the new item she detected in Mr. Shine’s house, about Kilmer’s refusal to allow them to retrieve it. Scott described the plan they had outlined for Creed, a plan that was a no go now. Tyler nodded when they were done.

  “Yeah, sounds like Creed,” he said, then seemed to retreat into thought.

  Janis recalled Tyler’s ability to come up with ideas that she and Scott had overlooked, going all the way back to their childhood when he’d suggested they waterproof their fort using palmetto fronds.

  “Any thoughts?” she asked.

  “I’ll make a go for it,” he said decisively.

  Scott turned toward him, his lenses filling with the pale light through the window. “How?”

  “You said they’re watching the two of you, right? Well, how about you guys take a stroll up to the Grove this evening. Maybe even act like you’re plotting something. That’ll pull their attention to the back of the ’hood. Meantime, I’ll have Creed’s truck going. I should be able to disrupt the monitors long enough to drive out the front entrance. Might b
e a race from there, but I’ll get to the house and grab whatever it is. You said you drew a map?”

  “It’s on Creed’s stereo,” Scott said.

  Tyler turned up a hand as though to say, well?

  Scott nodded and faced Janis. He and Tyler were both watching her, awaiting her response. To Janis, the plan sounded clumsy with almost no chance of success. But it was Tyler’s life. Without a better idea, how could she deny him the opportunity to save himself?

  “It’s a good plan,” she said, her heart breaking. “I’m in.”

  Scott didn’t need to access their rapport to feel the tension radiating from Janis. As they circled the final cul-de-sac in the Grove, Scott noticed that the sky had fallen to dark blue, starlight pricking through.

  Think we’ve been up here long enough? he asked.

  He’s made his move, she thought back. Yeah, we can start heading down.

  Scott didn’t know whether she was in communication with Tyler, but the two were clearly linked. Scott knew better than to ask for a play-by-play. Janis was too on edge and, frankly, so was he.

  “Crap,” Janis muttered, breaking into a run.

  Scott’s stomach clenched as he sprinted to catch up. He didn’t have to ask. They left the Grove by its main street, cresting the rise beyond. At the top, they stopped to take in the scene. Down the hill, near the entrance to Oakwood, a fleet of Steel’s cruisers had Tyler’s truck surrounded.

  Forget him racing them to Mr. Shine’s house, Scott thought to himself. He didn’t even make it out of the neighborhood.

  “Let’s go down,” Janis said.

  They made it a half block before his and Janis’s watches beeped.

  “‘Stop. Await escort home,’” Scott read aloud.

  Two cruisers appeared and pulled around in front of them. Doors opened and Steel’s men emerged. They weren’t carrying weapons, and they did not act aggressively, but neither did they hesitate in grasping his and Janis’s arms and leading them to separate cars.

  What do we do? Scott asked as he was helped into a cruiser’s rear seat. He twisted his neck around in time to see Janis’s red hair disappear beyond the back door and tinted window of the other car.

  Nothing, she answered sadly.

  Back propped against her headboard, Janis stared into the darkness. The house was quiet. Her mother’s muffled sobs and the low reassurances of her father—“they’ll be all right”—no longer penetrated her bedroom wall.

  Merry night before Christmas, she thought.

  Past the foot of her bed, she could make out the outline of her trophy-stacked dresser. Beside it, her two packed suitcases. In a little under six hours, she and her teammates would be evacuating Oakwood, quarantined from their homes and families, the rest of the world.

  And for who knew how long. Weeks? Months? A year?

  But the more important question in Janis’s mind was the one that had distressed her mother. Would they be safe?

  During her and Scott’s second reprimand of the day, Kilmer had fallen back on the tired refrain that getting them to the secure site was his top priority. He wasn’t going to allow them to undermine his effort. “I’m trying to protect you,” he said in exasperation. “Don’t you understand that?”

  To make them understand, he posted additional agents around their houses and in the corridors below ground. There would be no more going out that night, no more collaborating, no more “jailbreaks,” as he called it. He was getting them on that helicopter at 0500 and flying them to safety.

  But would they be safe?

  As badly as Janis wanted to believe so, she shook her head. The answer was written in the plane of reality she could perceive. Written in Tyler’s blood. Janus is a powerful god, a diviner, Mrs. Fern had proclaimed on the first day of high school, an eternity ago. One face looking to the past. The other peering ahead, to the future. But given Janis’s inability to act on her most recent prophesy, the power felt less like a divine gift and more like a cruel curse.

  Patterns played over her vision. Once more she saw Tyler on the ground, blood and tissue—

  Hey, you awake?

  Janis jerked at the suddenness of the voice. It was Scott’s.

  Yeah, she said, relaxing her breaths. Can’t sleep.

  Me, neither. Want to talk it out?

  It’s just … I’m starting to wonder if some futures are so potent, so probable, that they actually resist intervention. Like the harder we try to alter it, the harder that future digs its heels in.

  Kind of like Creed.

  Just like Creed, Janis agreed, except he’d sneak some punches in, too.

  In the darkness of her bedroom, Scott’s chuckle made her feel less alone. No, I get what you’re saying, he said, but I don’t think you’d be shown something unless it was in your power to change it.

  How do you mean?

  Remember the trips we took into the past? Every time, we were shown something key. Something meant to help us with whatever we were trying to figure out. I think your precognition works in a similar way, except by showing you things you’re meant to change.

  I just feel like we’re out of options, she said.

  Out of apparent options, he answered. You had the right idea earlier. For now, we put everything into vigilance and defense. And we wait. Sooner or later, the proper action will be revealed.

  She nodded slowly, allowing his words to find resonance with her intuition.

  Are you sure? she asked.

  I believe in your abilities, Janis. I believe in you.

  Thanks. That means a lot.

  Think you’ll be able to catch a few winks before we have to fly out?

  I’ll try. But even as she doubted it, she noticed the heaviness in her eyelids. I love you, Scott.

  And I you, Janis.

  Good night.

  Night.

  She felt their connection click off. She scooted from her sitting position and rolled onto her side, a pillow stuffed under her head, sheets and comforter drawn to her ear. Scott’s words were what she had needed to hear. She had done all she could. Now they would shift to another strategy. One that would protect everyone until a new plan of action came to light. She surrendered to that thought and to the encroaching shadow of sleep.

  A bloody image of Tyler jolted her eyes open. At the same moment, three hard taps sounded against her window.

  Scott?

  Throwing her covers back, she pushed her awareness beyond the curtains. She felt no one. She reached out farther until she encountered two of Steel’s men, both too distant to have been the knockers.

  Janis peeked around the edge of her curtain. Night stared back at her. The side yard was empty. She was about to decide that the taps had come from an insect when she spotted something at the edge of the window, wedged between glass and screen. She thumbed the lock up and slid the window partway open. As she pushed the cold edge of the screen out, she used her telekinetic abilities to catch the falling object and deliver it into her hand.

  A folded-up piece of paper.

  She closed and locked the window with a pair of thoughts and carried the paper to her desk. The light of her clicked-on desk lamp revealed handwriting that she recognized as Scott’s. What could he possibly want to communicate in writing that he couldn’t have done moments ago telepathically? And how had he gotten from his house to hers in the first place?

  But Janis saw that it wasn’t a new note; it was the map Scott had sketched and labeled earlier that evening.

  Someone had folded it into … an envelope?

  She released a flap and inverted the map-turned-envelope over her desk. A silver necklace spilled out. As Janis touched its crystal pendant, she knew immediately that it was the item she had felt at Mr. Shine’s house.

  Joy and fresh hope rushed inside her. Someone had retrieved it. But who?

  She opened the map all the way, spread it on her desk, and pressed a hand to it. Images came to her.

  “I’ll be damned,” she whispered. />
  While she and Scott had acted as a diversion for Tyler, Tyler getting swarmed by Steel’s men had acted as a diversion for his brother. Creed had used the opportunity to bolt from the neighborhood, locate the item, and return with it, later delivering it to her window.

  And all without detection.

  His motives were less clear, though she was betting he’d demand some sort of payment.

  Fine by me, Janis thought.

  In that moment, though, the why didn’t matter. She was concerned with the what. She lowered herself onto her desk chair and stared at the necklace. From deep inside the crystal’s pink-white faces, an energy seemed to stir. An energy that called to her. She entertained Kilmer’s warning that Mr. Shine’s sister had left the item to bait her, but only briefly.

  Closing her eyes, Janis allowed herself to be pulled into the crystal.

  23

  Reginald.

  The voice fell through his dreaming mind like a silver coin dropped into a deep well. To that point, his dream had been soundless: a woman he had once known and loved peering at him over a bare shoulder, white-blond hair falling around a pair of dark eyes, the angle of her cheek suggesting a smile. She had rarely smiled in life. So often serious, more often silent…

  Reginald.

  He stirred at the sound of his name.

  Madelyn?

  But he was losing the image. He reached for her shoulder and plunged from the limbic realm of dreaming into a panicked waking. His eyes flew open to a night-dark room, the lights of the courtyard amber behind his blinds. His heart thumped inside a skeletal chest. He peeled away fever-damp sheets and shivered as the cold air of the room met his heat.

  Reginald.

  He listened into the apartment. “Madelyn?”

  Their old rapport. The voice had come through their old rapport. Urgency filled him as he concentrated inward. The route was familiar, but the journey confused: a splashing, wading effort. Like the dream image of her, the rapport seemed to loom in front of him, ever out of his reach.

  But with a final lunge, he was there. And for the first time in more than twenty-five years, he was not alone. A watchful presence moved around the periphery of the hallowed space.