When Titan fell to his knees, Scott noticed the approaching figure.
Judging by the subtle curves of the battle suit, it was a young woman. She had separated from Dutch and his men and was closing the distance to Titan, one arm extended before her.
Titan made a gurgling sound and fell forward.
Scott and the other Champions circled Titan while keeping a safe distance. Margaret was up and walking too, though with a stagger. Scott placed a hand on Reginald’s shoulder. Though the face beyond the visor was another person’s entirely, Scott still thought of him as Mr. Shine.
“You all right?” Scott asked.
“Am now,” he answered. “Thanks for sparing my eye. You really do need the set.”
Scott’s legs turned rubbery as he caught Reginald’s joke. The relief.
He looked at where Dutch’s men were placing restraints on Shockwave and Minion and taking them into their custody. From there, his gaze moved to the young woman who had stopped on the other side of Titan.
“If he starts to move, I’ll do it again,” she said.
“I’m sorry.” Scott stepped around to meet her. “And you are…?”
“Oh, Erin.” Through the visor, a pair of lively brown eyes blinked below a scythe of copper blond hair. She squeezed his offered hand. “I’m on the Beta team. Or what’s left of them.”
Then it clicked for Scott. The calls Kilmer was going to make to the other teams.
“So someone came through,” he said.
Erin shrugged at the obvious.
“And your power is, what, suffocation?” Tyler asked.
“It’s controlling pressure, actually. I just created a negative field around his helmet until the oxygen was drawn from it. Then it was just a matter of waiting for him to pass out.”
She said it all very nonchalantly.
Reginald turned his serious blue eyes on Scott. “Any word from Janis?”
“She said something about an order being given to Techie, but I didn’t catch the rest.”
He focused into their rapport. Janis, you there? Can you hear me?
The words reverberated as though tumbling down a dark well. Dread cinched his heart. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “I have to go to that house.”
Reginald seized his arm. “Let me. If she said Techie’s been given an order, it’s going to be the money transfer. You need to get to a computer and find wherever the hell he is, see it doesn’t happen.”
Scott hesitated. Reginald was right. “Just, please…”
“I’ll get her to you safe.”
Reginald turned and began running toward the back of the Grove. He shifted to look like a middle-class member of suburbia, the pistols at his belt transforming into a pair of sports bottles.
The man was more than capable, Scott reminded himself. He would have to trust him.
“You can use the super computer at command and control.”
Scott turned to Dutch. “I will if I need to.” He stepped forward and removed the transceiver from Titan’s ear. “But if the Witch is nearby, Techie might be, too. I’ll have a better chance if I can reach him.”
What Scott didn’t mention was his fear of being blown into the cosmos again. He inspected the transceiver and saw that it was voice activated. He inserted it into his own ear.
He deepened his voice to mimic Titan’s. “Techie, do you read? Come in, Techie.”
The earpiece vibrated with laughter.
“Nice try, maggot.”
Reginald recalled being taken to the house blindfolded and the sensation of the car’s tires rolling from pavement to a hard-packed dirt road. He made that same transition now, but on foot.
He saw the house ahead, where and how Janis had described it.
Several men writhed on the ground. Reginald recognized them as members of the Witch’s security team. One wobbled to his feet and inspected his firearm, which appeared to have been mangled. Without breaking stride, Reginald shifted his cells to look like another security thug.
The man limped in a half circle at the sound of Reginald’s approaching footsteps. “She got past us. She’s inside.”
Reginald glanced at the open front door.
“Who else is in there?”
“Just our people.”
“Shadow?”
The man nodded. “Just showed up.”
Damn. Damn. Damn.
“All right. I’ll check it out.”
The words were still leaving Reginald’s mouth when he had the chilling sense he was being watched. He broke for the front porch and was followed by coughs of gunfire. He cleared the steps and pressed his back to the wall beside the door, safe for the moment.
Reginald drew a pistol from his belt. The shots had come from one of the second floor’s shattered windows. He signaled to the man to whom he had just spoken to remain down. The last thing he needed was for him to try to tag along, creating even more confusion.
Reginald peeked around the door frame and into the house before stepping inside.
Two men were down in the foyer, another two beyond. A door beneath the staircase stood open. Reginald imagined Janis descending the stairs, taking out the Witch, and then getting taken out by Shadow, who would have followed her down, probably in the guise of someone Janis knew.
An enormous sorrow swallowed Reginald’s heart.
My fault for not finishing her off.
He listened for movement upstairs before creeping to the basement steps. If there was even the slightest possibility Janis was alive, he needed to get her back out, get her to safety.
He was almost to the basement steps when the angle of light through the front door caught two thin streaks of moisture on the varnished floor. Reginald listened again before stooping over them. He pulled a finger through the streaks, then held it beneath his nose. The odor was foul, like rotten cheese. Like the Witch. But Reginald didn’t think the streaks were produced by her. No, someone had been dragged through her moisture and then up from the basement.
A faint hope took hold in Reginald.
He followed the intermittent streaking from the basement steps around to the staircase. At the bottommost step, he pulled something from a narrow seam in the wood and held it up.
A fire-red strand of hair. He let out his breath.
Janis was upstairs. And if Shadow had bothered dragging her there, chances were good she was still alive.
Reginald thought about shifting, but there was no guise he could assume that would fool Shadow or give her pause. He kept to the left side of the steps as he crept up them, his eyes, the aim of his pistol, unwavering from the upper-story hallway the staircase opened onto.
He stopped on the top step and shot a quick glance down the hallway. A long Turkish runner extended past several doorways. A plank of wood underneath clicked when Reginald set foot on it.
He winced and drew back into the stairway.
“There’s no need for stealth,” Shadow called out. “You’ll find me in the second room on the right.”
Reginald peeked again. The door to the room she’d indicated stood open. He led with his pistol until he was outside the doorway, shoulder pressed to the frame. He looked down to where the streaks of moisture left the runner and disappeared into the room. His heartbeats hardened in his chest.
“I don’t think I need to explain the situation,” Shadow said, her cold voice echoing from inside the room. “Janis is here, yes. Alive, yes. What happens next will depend on you.”
“What do you want?” Reginald asked.
“First, for you to set your weapons on the floor behind you. Both of them.”
For the flicker of an instant, Reginald wondered if he could round the corner, sight her, and get off a shot in time. He pressed his lips together and shook his head. Wouldn’t happen, damn it. She was at least as fast as he was, and she would already have the doorway covered.
“All right.” Kneeling, he set his pistol on the wood beside the runner so she could hear it. He then u
nfastened the other one from his belt and set it beside the first. “They’re on the floor.”
“Step into the doorway with your hands atop your head.”
Reginald took a breath. If Janis was inside the room, he had to get her out. It was that simple.
He laced his fingers over his crown and moved into the rectangle of pale light.
Scott bristled at the taunting voice in the earpiece. He was preparing his counter-insult before reminding himself of the gravity of the situation.
“Your leader is out of commission,” Scott said as calmly as he could. “Shockwave, Minion, and Titan have been subdued and detained. It’s over. Do you understand? Give yourself up and you won’t get hurt.”
“Do you hear that?” Techie asked.
“Hear what?”
“Yeah, I don’t hear the fat lady belting one out, either.”
“Listen to me. You transfer that money, and all hell is going to break loose. We’re talking World War Three.”
“That’s not what the Witch foresaw.”
“Yeah, and she didn’t foresee the Scale getting their asses handed to them, and look how that worked out.”
“Well, this ass is still standing. Or sitting, as the case may be.”
Typing sounded through Scott’s earpiece. In the background, the hum of servers. If only he could locate them. But it was the same problem as the last time. He couldn’t trace the wireless signal, and going tower to tower to set up directional indicators was going to take too much time.
“Whatever they’re paying you,” Scott said. “The Champions will double it. All you have to do is walk away.”
Techie laughed. “Growing desperate now, are we?”
“What’s wrong with that offer?” he demanded.
“Besides sounding like it came straight out of a comic book, your offer doesn’t get me what I want.”
“And what’s that?”
“Global access.”
Scott caught himself nodding. He knew the desire.
“If I walk away,” Techie continued, still typing, “poof—no more access.”
Scott struggled for a different angle. Techie went quiet, too, no doubt waiting for Scott to come back with something he could smack down in equally derisive fashion. The servers hummed on.
Scott opened his mouth, then closed it.
Every computer had a signature. Every computer made a distinct sound.
Scott pulled the transceiver from his ear and turned it off. He ran up to where Dutch was coordinating Titan’s removal from the field, a project that was going to require winches and a flatbed truck.
“Who’s left in command and control?” Scott asked.
“Just the bare bones and Kilmer,” Dutch replied. “We called everyone else up.”
Scott spat a curse and took off running toward the arriving cruisers.
“Why?” Dutch called after him.
“Techie’s down there. That’s where he’s making the transfer.”
Janis was in a straight-back wooden chair, her head hung forward. Beyond her dangling mass of red hair, Reginald made out a transparent mask covering the lower half of her face. A clear tube ran from it to a hissing canister of what Reginald guessed to be one of the flurane gases.
She was out cold and would be as long as she kept breathing the stuff.
His gaze moved to his sister. She was standing in the shadow beside the broken window, a black pistol held to Janis’s head, the bore of a second one staring Reginald in the face.
“I’m here,” Reginald said.
“I see that,” Shadow answered. “Turn around once.”
He did as she said. She was checking to make sure his back and sides were as barren of weapons as his front. The muscles around his eyes tried to wince away as he turned to face her again.
“Very good,” she said.
As Reginald’s vision adjusted to the gloom of the room, he saw that the front of Shadow’s jumpsuit was fluid spattered. The breeze fluttering the torn curtains caught the rotten scent and carried it past him.
“The Witch,” he said. “You shot her.”
“She’d outlived her purpose. Besides, I was growing tired of her pomposity.”
“What’s the boss going to say?”
“What can he say? He’ll be forced to work through me now.”
He, Reginald noted. Whoever was behind the Scale was a single entity and male. But none of that info would be useful if Shadow blew it from his head. She had called him up here to demonstrate her power, her control. He had to keep the conversation going along those lines.
To demonstrate his own helplessness, he took another step into the large bedroom.
“How can the Scale operate without the Witch’s clairvoyance?” he asked.
“You’re looking at the answer.” Shadow cut her eyes to the side.
“Janis?”
“I know what you’re thinking. She’ll never go along with it. And I would be inclined to agree if it weren’t for Techie. He seems to have a knack for neurosurgery, rewiring brain matter to suit another’s will.” With the barrel of one gun, Shadow drew a circle around the crown of Janis’s head.
In Reginald’s mind, he heard the chilling sound of a bone saw. He buried the horrid thought.
“I have a question,” Shadow said.
Reginald gave a nod for her to continue.
“What happened to our parents?”
Reginald couldn’t tell whether she was being serious or facetious. He went inward anyway, recounting the visions from his dreams. “All I remember of our mother was her eyes. No name, nothing else. They were fragile, tender eyes. Loving eyes. She was a saint. I can see that. It’s where our blue irises came from. Our father’s eyes were their antithesis. Oil-black, like madness. I think he was mad. Whenever the house smelled like corn mash, he would talk about getting the devils out of our mother’s head. But they were all in his own.”
He watched the bore of Shadow’s pistol as he spoke. It didn’t waver from him.
“One morning, he just … killed her,” Reginald continued. “And then he turned the gun on himself.”
“That’s it?”
Reginald tried to read her eyes. In the dimness they seemed to have become the same black as their father’s.
“That’s all I remember,” he said.
“If good were as ruthless as evil, perhaps our mother would have killed him first.”
“She would no longer have been a saint.”
“What about you?” Shadow asked. “You’ve had your chances. Two of them.”
Reginald nodded slightly, thinking of the day he had watched her walk past the barrel of his loaded Glock. The recent night he’d had her carotids in the crushing clench of his arm.
“Why didn’t you finish me?” she pressed.
“A part of me still sees you as my sister.”
Reginald couldn’t tell for sure, but the murderous edge seemed to be easing from Shadow’s tone. Maybe that was why she had called him up here, he thought, why she was talking to him now. Their recent encounters, though adversarial, were the only contact she’d had with family. He was the key to who she was. To who she could become, perhaps.
“A part of me still thinks of you as my twin,” he said.
“All the more reason. Where do you suppose our father’s evil went?”
“It doesn’t work that way. You have a choice.”
“Oh?”
The pistol cracked in her grip. Something tore through Reginald’s neck. He doubled over and clapped a hand to the site.
“Do you see?” she said. “Where good hesitates, evil fills the void.”
Hissing through clenched teeth, Reginald attempted to shift his cells to close the spurting wound. The spot burned like hell, but it had been a peripheral shot. In and out. Some damaged muscle tissue, a few lesser veins blown open.
“It is never otherwise,” Shadow said.
The flashing lights of blood loss grew in Reginald’s vision. He lung
ed for the still-raised pistol, one hand out to seize it, but the room seemed to lengthen. He stumbled to the floor.
Shadow whispered, “I guess someone has to rid the world of its devils.”
Something hard pressed the back of Reginald’s head.
“Georgia, please. You have a—”
The pistol cracked again.
43
Scott pealed the cruiser around the cul-de-sac at the end of the Meadows, threw the door open, and pushed himself out into the tire smoke still blowing from the asphalt. He finished securing his helmet as he sprinted the length of the walkway.
The transceiver was back in his ear, and for the last minute, he had been listening to Techie typing away, setting up the transactions that would restore the Soviet Union’s solvency, and then some.
Any second he could be hitting send on that transfer.
Scott pushed through the front door, ran to the refrigerator, and turned the temperature down to eighteen degrees. He then wheeled toward the kitchen counter, waiting for it to rise.
Nothing happened.
Son of a…
He concentrated into the elevator’s electronics, hoping Techie hadn’t had time to booby trap it. The power was shut down. Scott winced as he reactivated it. The hydraulics shuddered to life. No trap. Scott slipped back into his body to find the counter rising, the door in its side already sliding open. But the compartment wasn’t empty. An enormous white gown emerged from the shadows.
It was a hospital gown, Scott saw, and Jesse Hoag was inside it. His teammate’s stitched head nearly shattered the ceiling light as he rose to his full height.
“J-Jesse, what’s going on?” Scott stammered while backing away. “Wh-what are you doing up?”
For an instant, he was back on the school tennis courts his freshman year, Jesse looming over him. When Jesse’s pitted gray eyes settled on his, Scott felt the same urge to piss himself.
“Are you all ri—”
The gown billowed around Jesse as he heaved into a punch.
Scott stumbled backwards, avoiding Jesse’s fist but toppling into the pantry. Shelves broke around him. Canned goods spilled over his helmet. A container of flour broke open, throwing up a white dust cloud.
XGeneration (Book 6): Greatest Good Page 25