Maddie? he called.
The presence seemed to hesitate.
No, Reginald, came the answer in a concerned voice. It’s Janis.
Janis? Reginald moved the name around his fevered mind. Then, all in an instant, it came to him. Janis Graystone. The girl he had left the necklace for. A new kind of exhilaration pumped through him. She had found it! She had accessed his and Madelyn’s old rapport!
Janis, he said. God bless you.
I got the message you left for me here.
Good. He struggled to recall the details of the thought form. He had expressed the danger she and her teammates were in, of course. He had said he could help; he had a plan. He was fairly certain that had been the extent of it.
Yes, good, he repeated. But our time’s short, Janis.
I understand.
In her response, Reginald glimpsed the depth of her understanding. His illness, the control the Scale exerted over him because of it, his recent imprisonment at their hands, his dwindling window to act.
Damn, she was powerful. Which meant they had a Champion’s chance.
All right, he said. Guess we can cut to the chase. To remain alive, I was to eliminate one of you. That was the deal they gave me. He guarded the thought that would reveal his one-time intention to carry it out. More important than honesty right now was securing the girl’s trust.
A life for a life. Janis paused. Can I ask whose?
The matriarchal voice of the Witch rose over Reginald’s thoughts: “We’ve decided to make all of the Champions fair game. But there is one in particular we want eliminated. The girl.”
They sort of left that up to me, he answered in half truth, blocking the other half from her. The leader of the Scale is a powerful clairvoyant, a woman who goes by the Witch. Once an action takes place, she’s able to follow the chain of cause and effect to its most likely outcome. In other words, she can see what I’m going to do or not do before it happens.
So, if you don’t eliminate one of us, she’ll know.
That’s right, but don’t worry. The game’s changed now.
How?
Reginald couldn’t help but smile at how someone so powerful could still be so innocent. He felt a proximity to Madelyn he had not felt in years. If he could just stave off his illness a little longer…
For now, it begins with you and me, he said, no one else. No one else can even know. Are we understood?
He felt her tighten up. For a moment, he feared he’d lost her trust.
Yes, she said at last.
All right, then. Here’s how it’s going to go.
And he laid out his plan.
24
Christmas morning
4:35 a.m.
“Insomnia?” Margaret asked.
Janis stirred from her tense anticipation. They had just finished hugging and kissing their parents goodbye and were standing in the elevator that descended from their garage, suitcases at their feet.
“What?” Janis said.
“You were up and down half the night.”
“Oh, yeah.” The elevator door opened. Janis lifted her suitcases and followed her sister into the corridor. “Just a lot on my mind. Surprised I slept at all, to tell you the truth.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Telling me the truth?”
“What do you mean?”
To avoid Margaret’s prosecutorial stare, Janis pretended to adjust her right grip on her suitcase handle. Reginald had been very clear. She was not to tell anyone, and Janis had agreed. It had nothing to do with whether or not she could trust Margaret or the rest of her teammates, and everything to do with “selling the scene.” That’s how Reginald had described it. For their plan to work, Janis had to sell the scene, as horrible as it would appear.
“I heard you open and close your window last night.”
“Yeah, my room was getting warm.”
“And later, you were talking to someone.”
“I was?” That one caught her off guard. She had been so immersed in her conversation with Reginald that she wondered now whether she could have spoken her end of the exchange aloud.
“And don’t tell me you were talking in your sleep.”
Janis glanced over. That was exactly what she had been about to suggest. “There was no one in my room,” she said instead.
Margaret had been walking at an impatient clip, but now she stopped and set her suitcases down. She turned to face Janis, arms folding across the front of her charcoal-gray Champions suit.
“I’m getting sick and tired of this.” She held up a hand to silence Janis. “You and Scott are sneaking off here and there without a word of explanation. Not even when I ask you point blank. And then yesterday, Tyler is caught trying to leave the neighborhood, and you and Scott are brought to Kilmer’s office for a reprimand. I’m going to ask you one more time. What is going on?”
“I’m trying to protect you is what’s going on!” The answer came out in one exasperated breath.
Margaret cocked an eyebrow, half in surprise at the confession, half in expectation of her spilling more. Janis checked her watch, then set her own suitcases down. She couldn’t lie anymore, not to her sister.
“All right, look, I’ve been having these premonitions,” she said in a rushed whisper. “In them, the Scale offs one of us. Scott and I were trying to find some sort of a lead back to them, to keep the premonition from becoming reality. Early on, we had Kilmer’s blessing—he let us leave the neighborhood—but after Jesse’s return, he called us back in. The timing couldn’t have been worse because we had a possible lead, an object I sensed at Mr. Shine’s house.”
“The custodian?”
“Yeah, but he’s not a custodian, Margaret.” Janis gave a brief rundown of his history as former Champion, refugee, guardian angel, and finally, unwilling accomplice of the Scale. During their conversation last night, Janis learned that she had been correct or close on all points.
“With the Program watching me and Scott, Tyler was going to try to make a run to Mr. Shine’s,” she continued. “He got nabbed, but Creed made it out. He brought the object over last night.”
“What was it?” Margaret asked, the challenge in her voice replaced by quiet curiosity.
Janis reached into the collar of her Champions suit and pulled on the silver necklace until the crystal pendant spilled out. The gold chain with the crucifix she normally wore was tucked inside the pocket of her smaller suitcase. She rolled the crystal between her finger and thumb.
“It holds a certain energy. By tapping into it, I was able to access a place where Mr. Shine and I could talk. He has a plan.”
Margaret leaned forward, her sea-green eyes keenly focused on the crystal. She seemed hesitant to touch it, as though the stone could burn her. At length, she stood back again.
“How do we know we can trust him?” she asked.
It was the question Janis had grappled with last night, following the meeting. Someone had impersonated him before in what could have led to very deadly consequences. But the way Reginald had called out at first, mistaking Janis’s presence for someone named Madelyn—in that heartrending call, Janis understood Madelyn to have been a murdered former Champion and the love of Reginald’s life. The memory of her lingered ghostlike in the psychic space Reginald maintained, Janis’s portal there a necklace that had once belonged to her.
Maddie? he had said. Janis tasted the salt of her own tears. You couldn’t fake that kind of pain.
“We can trust him,” she said at last.
“So, what’s this plan?”
Margaret picked up her suitcases and resumed walking. Janis followed her lead, wondering just how much she should reveal. The guilt of not painting the full picture was one thing; the guilt of having Margaret believe, not two hours from now, that her younger sister had been shot dead was something else entirely. The way Janis saw it, she had no choice.
“All right,” she whispered, “but this stays between us.”
In the just-paling sky, the stealth chopper touched down, field grass flattening beneath the whumping force of the blades. Janis unstrapped herself and climbed out, following agents and her teammates in a ducked-down run.
From a safe distance, she turned and watched the black chopper tip forward and lift off. They had reached the transfer point in a two-stage itinerary meant to throw off anyone tracking them. Minutes from now another chopper would touch down and load them back up.
Janis removed her helmet and shook out her hair. Some of the other Champions had done the same. With her telekinetic shield in place, she rotated to get her bearings. When her gaze met Creed’s, she gave a quick nod as a thank you for last night’s delivery. He widened his eyes in a way that said, you owe me. Janis snorted to herself. No surprise there.
The tension of the moment quickly reclaimed her. She felt past the perimeter set up by Steel’s men, to the outer edges of the clearing, where the grass grew taller. Perhaps three hundred yards away, a presence pinged in her awareness.
Janis took a steadying breath. He was there, scoping them.
“You doing okay?” Scott asked.
She wheeled to where he’d arrived beside her. “So far, so good. You?”
“It felt weird leaving the house this morning, not knowing when we’d be back.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Janis fought to keep the breathlessness from her voice. Scott had no idea about the crystal, her chat with Reginald, their plan—anything. She had already compromised the sell-the-scene bit by telling Margaret. “My mom was a complete wreck.”
“Mine just wanted to make sure I’d packed enough underwear.”
Scott’s plaintive smile tore at Janis’s heart. What would he do when he saw her fall? She opened a psychic link between them and then closed it. She couldn’t compromise the plan further.
He placed a hand on her low back.
She reopened the link. Listen to me, she said quickly. No matter what happens, I’m okay. All right? I’m fine.
She stepped beyond Scott’s touch and perplexed stare. She couldn’t bear the thought of him not knowing. Her heart beat a timpani as she felt Reginald’s focus narrowing in. She was in plain sight now.
This has to go perfectly.
She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, her mind falling into brief alignment with Reginald’s.
Janis? Scott said. What in the world are you talk—?
A distant explosion ended the thought.
Scott was barely aware of the detonation. He lunged forward and caught Janis as she listed sideways. Her body flopped into his arms, hair falling over her face. He knelt with her to the ground, the strange message of just seconds before adding to the confusion of the moment.
No matter what happens, I’m okay, she had said. All right? I’m fine.
But she didn’t look or feel fine. She felt…
“Janis,” he whispered urgently.
He propped her upper back with a knee and swept the hair from her face. Her eyes were closed, lips deathly pale. Time seemed to have slowed, but now it was catching up again. The other Champions seemed to suddenly come to life around him. Margaret screamed.
Scott reached into his rapport with Janis, but that, too, felt lifeless.
“Janis!” he cried.
In the instant Janis heard the shot, she released a psionic blast. It wasn’t strong, but it was enough to short herself out. She was dimly aware of falling into Scott’s arms before unconsciousness claimed her.
For a timeless moment, she experienced nothing and everything.
An incomprehensible cosmos, trillions upon trillions of heavenly bodies arranged in glorious, growing nebulae, stretched to the far horizons of her awareness. She reached out in soul-swelling ecstasy and then watched in crushing disappointment as the cosmos collapsed to a point.
A low, vibrating note hummed, becoming a woman’s voice.
“The valley is come,” the voice whispered. “But you must persevere.”
There was something maternal, even familiar, in the voice. And then Scott was calling to her, as though from above the surface of a deep pool. His presence wavered in and out as she climbed toward him.
“What valley?” Janis called.
But the woman’s voice had melded back into the vibrating note, receding beneath her.
Janis!
She was nearly to the surface, nearly in Scott’s arms, when Janis remembered something else. Selling the scene had been the first task. Thanks in part to Margaret’s scream—which Janis could hear as well now—they had accomplished that. Now, the second task. Before showing any signs of life, she needed to plant an alternate future for the Scale.
She felt the Witch’s sight hovering over them as it had been the day at the warehouse and, later, when she and Scott had pursued the source of the transceiver signal. Hovering like a pair of hungry red eyes.
Janis had already prepared the images: a casket viewing, funeral service, weeping family and friends, a future Champions Program sans one psionic, Reginald returning to the Scale.
The Witch just needed to be convinced of that future long enough for Reginald to get his life-saving medicine, whereupon he would become a Champion again and reveal the rest of his plan. One, he claimed, would expose and defeat the Scale.
Janis began unpackaging the images, cycling them through the Witch’s vision.
Margaret screamed again. Too real this time.
Tyler recoiled, but not from the sound of the shot. In the same moment, something had hit him across the face like a wet mop. He wiped his jaw and stared at the red smear across his palm.
Something was wrong, bad wrong.
He dropped his gaze to his torso as grayness spotted around his vision.
The front of his suit was blood-soaked. Littered with what looked like ground meat. The weight of it all seemed to pull him forward and down. He tried to take a step to catch himself but couldn’t. His legs had taken on weight, too, as though something were anchoring his feet.
His gaze dropped further.
No, wait, he thought dimly. Wait…
Someone screamed. Margaret? Janis?
Tyler landed in a sit.
Janis stopped and checked her link to the other Champions.
They were all there, save one. In her in-between state, Janis couldn’t tell who was missing. She could only see the torn threads that had once connected them fluttering in the astral winds.
No.
Janis thrashed to the surface until she was coming to in Scott’s arms. But he was no longer looking down on her or calling her name. His neck was craned around. Janis sat up and followed his gaze.
Ice water dumped into her bloodstream.
No!
Tyler was seated, eyes closed, blood spattered across his front. Margaret was to one side, still screaming. Steel’s men looked from Tyler to the surrounding field, carbines raised.
It wasn’t until Scott dipped his shoulder from the bottom half of her view that Janis saw what everyone else could. She pushed herself up until she was standing. Scott rose beside her, their hands on one another to keep from wavering. Several hanks of hair littered the field out ahead of them.
Over Tyler’s feet lay Creed, facedown. Part of his head was missing.
“Down! Down!” Agent Steel cried.
Janis took a faint step forward.
Oh God, what have I done?
25
Reginald’s eye jerked from the scope in horror.
…the hell?
The trigger was sensitive—no first or second pressure—but he was damn certain he hadn’t squeezed it. Not unless he’d been seized by another fit. But even if he had, the long-haired boy hadn’t been his target. The crosshairs had been fixed two feet above Janis.
A cold dawning wrapped its fingers around Reginald’s throat. He drew the bolt back. The slender round he had chambered was still there.
He wasn’t alone. There was another shooter.
“Shit,” he spat.
“Down! Down!” a voice cried in the distance.
Reginald returned his eye to the scope. The Champions were pressing themselves flat, all except for Tyler, who was sitting with his brother’s body, his face white and blood-spattered. Reginald watched the agents gauging angles, trying to determine where the shot had come from.
He needed to get the hell out of there.
Before he left the scope, he saw Janis raise her head. She was too distant to hear, but Reginald read her mouth: three hundred yards. Helmets turned toward him. Reginald pushed himself from the rifle and scrambled back into the grass on hands and knees, his head reeling with illness.
The first streaks of laser fire burned past. They were shooting blindly, but it wouldn’t be long before someone got lucky. He was still too far from the trees, from the Jeep he’d parked off the dirt road. In his present condition, he wasn’t going to be able to outrun his pursuers.
His one chance was Janis.
He focused into their rapport, startled to find her waiting.
You used me.
Wait, wait, listen to me!
No, you listen to me.
There’s someone—
A powerful force detonated inside the rapport. She had hit it with the mother of all blasts. Before he could draw out, psychic shrapnel tore through Reginald’s consciousness and blinded him.
He pitched onto his side in the grass.
“He’s down,” Janis said, gaining her feet.
“Who?” Scott asked.
“Mr. Shine.”
“Mr. Shine?” She could feel his profound confusion. “The good one or the bad one?”
Janis didn’t know. Was there even a difference anymore? Instead of answering him, she broke into a run, away from where Tyler cradled Creed’s lifeless body, toward the shooter.
I trusted him, she thought dimly. I gave him the coordinates of our location.
And in doing so, she had enabled him to murder her teammate. It explained the dream she’d had, the one where she had been holding the rifle, taking aim. An inferno burst inside her, one that consumed her guilt and sorrow, her reason. There would be time for those later.
XGeneration (Book 6): Greatest Good Page 14