A minute later, the shifter and Tyler reappeared through the door.
Tyler nodded. “It’s him. His sister’s upstairs.”
Scott exhaled and met Reginald’s gaze. “I’m sorry. I had to be sure.”
“Don’t you worry,” Reginald replied, giving Scott’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. Whether he was aware of it or not, his voice had taken on the Mr. Shine texture. “I’d have done the same thing in your position. Now, what do you say we all get back to Oakwood.”
Reginald climbed into the driver’s seat, Tyler the passenger’s, and Scott into the back. He lay Janis gently on her side and set her head on his lap. As the car started forward, Scott found Reginald’s eyes in the rear-view mirror.
“What happened?” Scott asked, his voice a scraping whisper now.
“After Janis had taken care of the Witch, Shadow surprised her. By the time I arrived, Shadow had her restrained and breathing a knock-out gas. She held a gun on each of us. I tried grabbing for the one on me, but I fell. Thought I was a goner when I felt it against my head. What I couldn’t see was that she’d taken the other gun from Janis and put it under her own chin.”
“She … killed herself?” Scott asked, understanding that’s where the blood had come from.
Instead of an answer, Reginald’s eyes shifted to the road ahead.
Scott thought about what those final moments must have been like as he stroked the hair around Janis’s ear. How close they had both come. Fingertips touched the back of his hand.
He looked down to find Janis stirring. She squinted and smiled up at him.
There you are, she said.
45
One week later
Sunday, January 12
1:35 p.m.
Janis and Scott stood beneath an oak tree at the back of the small gathering. Director Kilmer had approved their attendance at the burial, as long as they didn’t associate with the other Champions. Not too hard, Janis thought, taking it in. With her sister and Jesse still recovering, there were no other Champions besides Tyler. The small audience of attendees were extended family and a handful of teens Janis recognized from the halls of Thirteenth Street High.
There was one, though, who she had come to know pretty well.
As the service concluded and the crowd began drifting toward the parking lot, Janis gave Scott’s hand a squeeze—be right back—and walked over to where Star stood alone. She was wearing a too-large black suit, rolled up at the cuffs, and Army boots that looked like they might have belonged to Creed.
“I am so sorry,” Janis said, her healing ribs sending up a dull ache.
Star turned her head of black spiked hair. Her face had been coated in a white base layer, then shadowed heavily around the eyes and in the hollows of her cheeks. Whether she had intended it or not, she looked like a skull.
“I guess I should be used to it by now,” Star said.
Her expression, which had shown the slightest surprise at finding Janis beside her, hardened as she turned back toward the open hole where her boyfriend’s coffin had just been lowered to rest.
“We grew up in the same neighborhood,” Janis said, as way of explanation for her presence, but it felt hollow. “We didn’t play together or anything, but in a weird way, he felt like … I don’t know, almost like a relative.”
“The evil step cousin?” Star’s black lips formed a cynical smile.
“He wasn’t evil,” Janis said softly. “I just think there was more to him than he liked to let on.”
Janis remembered how he had retrieved the necklace from Mr. Shine’s house for her on Christmas Eve. Scott had told her what Tyler had said about that later. About the act being his atonement for punching her in the stomach as kids.
Beside her, Star nodded. “I’m not sure how much I buy the whole car smashup story either.”
That had been the cover. Janis remained silent.
After another moment, Star took a breath. “All right,” she said.
She removed a shiny black stud from the constellation around her right ear, walked up to the rectangular hole, and tossed the stud inside. Metal clicked off wood. Janis wondered if the stud had been a gift from Creed, one in a pair. The thought made her tear up.
As Star followed Tyler and his mother toward the parking lot, Scott moved up beside Janis.
“Interesting what the pastor said about Tyler and Creed’s father.” Scott was looking after the retreating figures, his voice still hoarse from his damaged larynx. “I only knew that he’d left. I didn’t realize he’d died.”
Janis had only known that their father’s death had been Tyler’s secret. But she had picked up enough during the service to understand that Tyler had finally told his mother the truth. His mother had accepted it, bringing a kind of closure to her pain and Tyler’s long-standing guilt.
“Yeah,” was all Janis said.
“Do you think Tyler will be all right?”
“It’ll take time, of course. But he won’t be alone. I think someone’s taken an interest in him.”
She tilted her head to where Erin, the recently-inducted Champion, had stopped Tyler to give him a hug. Like Creed before her, she didn’t appear to place a high value on rules. Janis watched Tyler hug her back, one hand to the back of Erin’s neck where her copper hair was shaved before lengthening higher up.
“And I think the feeling’s mutual,” she added, glad for Tyler. She had experienced the depths of his loneliness.
“Man, I don’t know what we would’ve done if she hadn’t shown up when she did. Titan’s a nasty piece of work. It makes me nervous about the whole containment cell thing.”
Janis thought about Titan and the others in the Champions’ underground confinement center near command and control. The agents were apparently working on Shockwave and Minion. They weren’t much older than Janis and Scott, and the Program wanted to assess whether or not they could be turned, their powers put to benevolent rather than dark use. Titan had been deemed hopeless.
“What’s the story on Wayne?” she asked.
They had begun strolling toward the lot, the wind whipping the skirt of Janis’s dark dress below her coat and threatening to throw Scott’s black tie over a shoulder. He snuffed out a laugh that was part dismay, part disbelief.
“Apparently, I’m the one to blame,” he said.
“You?” With everything that had happened in the last week—the recovery from their injuries, the cleanup, their parents returning to Oakwood—Janis hadn’t gotten the whole story.
“When I sent Wayne on that errand back in the fall to find out what he could about Mr. Shine, he tried to tail him. Turns out he was tailing Reginald’s sister, Shadow, when she was just beginning to mimic him, before she’d replaced him. That could have ended really badly for Wayne. But when Shadow hauled him to Scale HQ for interrogation, they found some of his homemade gadgets in his pack. Impressive stuff, apparently—though I’m sure he oversold it. Wayne was already an electronics genius, I’ll give him that, but the Witch fed his aptitude with her energy, pushing him to the next level. Wayne salivated at the prospect of working for them, especially when he learned that he’d get to go up against me.”
“And that’s how he became Techie,” Janis said in no small wonder. “Are our guys trying to flip him, too?”
Scott shook his head. “In exchange for his release, Wayne agreed to remove the implant from Jesse’s brain. Just this morning, he was wiped of all associated memories and dumped in the alley behind Blue Chip Arcade. When he’s found, his amnesia will be chalked up to video game overload.”
“But those awful contraptions he can build…”
“Won’t happen—at least not with the same kind of sophistication. The Witch’s effects were temporary. Pretty soon, he’ll be plain old Wayne again. If you can call someone like that plain.”
“What about Jesse?”
“The surgery went well, apparently,” Scott said. “When he recovers enough, they’re going to talk to him, decide w
hat to do then. I mean, he did go to the Scale willingly, so there’s that.”
Janis unclasped her hands from behind her back and slipped one inside of Scott’s. “It’s so strange to think of there not really being a need for the Champions anymore. We put the Scale out of business. There are rumors of the Soviet Union breaking up, Russia selling its state-run assets. If that happened, the Cold War would be over, right?”
“Kilmer’s talking about trimming some of the neighborhood’s security features, but he convinced the president to let Oakwood remain as is for now, have us on a kind of standby. For just in case.”
“I can’t believe he has Agent Steel back on board,” Janis said. Next to the Wayne revelation, that was the second most improbable development to have come out of the last week. But Janis was even less sure how to feel about this one. She and Agent Steel were far from cozy.
“Or, for that matter, that Reagan restored Kilmer’s directorship,” Scott added. “I guess there are the rules and then there’s the real world. The real world likes results, and Kilmer and his team delivered.”
Janis nodded. She didn’t think she had ever seen Kilmer giddier than when he had congratulated them for defeating the Scale and halting the financial transaction to the Soviet Union.
“Besides restoring Kilmer,” Scott went on, “Reagan let him rewrite the protocols so the director’s position couldn’t be subverted by a subordinate again. Lesson learned. He also wrote a new protocol on how any future dismantling of the Program would be handled, and it strictly forbids wiping our or our families’ memories.”
Janis thought she understood Kilmer’s reasoning. Agent Steel might be a heartless drone, but she knew the ins and outs of security. And as rule-bound as she was, she would never operate outside of his directive again. Janis guessed she would have to feel all right about that.
“Sort of puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?” she said.
“How so?”
“According to Reginald, the Witch was having her own power struggle with Shadow, but look how their situation turned out—both killed. I’ve had my criticisms of the Champions Program, but in the greater scheme of things…” Something came to her, prompting a soft laugh.
“What?”
“I was just thinking about how it used to be like pulling teeth to get Kilmer to share anything. But from what you’re telling me, it sounds like we might have a hard time getting him to shut up.”
Scott chuckled. “Well, even though things are kosher again between him and the president and Steel, I think he learned something.” He looked over at her. “We might be the only ones he can trust.”
Janis nodded. “He’s probably right.”
By the time they reached the parking lot, all of the cars had pulled out save one. Beside a dark gray sedan stood an aging white man who, except for his sharp blue eyes, looked as indistinct as the car. Though the man had assumed a feeble form to blend in, Janis could feel his strength and vitality. During the roundup of the Scale’s hired thugs and a search of their outpost behind Oakwood, Dutch’s team had discovered a cache of a drug called Vitrin.
“Where to?” Reginald asked, opening the passenger side door for Janis.
Janis looked up at Scott, who gave a nod.
“Home,” they said together.
46
Director Kilmer stood to one side as Agent Steel emerged from the containment cell that held Shockwave, powering down her neural probe. The magnetic lock engaged behind her and four bolts slid home. Through the one-way glass, Kilmer watched Shockwave lay back on his cot, a steady stream of high frequency sound waves inhibiting the boy’s powers.
“Well?” Kilmer said.
Steel shook her head. “Like Minion, he doesn’t know who was sponsoring the Scale. On the question of turning him, it’s going to take time. He has no respect for authority. Despises it.”
“All right,” Kilmer said. “I’ll visit with him later.”
One of the reasons Kilmer had retained Steel was for her interrogative skills, which were needed now more than ever. She was the perfect bad cop to his good—and without even having to try.
They walked from Shockwave’s cell and stopped before Titan’s.
“If you’re looking for answers, sir, this is where I think we should focus our efforts,” Steel said.
Beyond the glass laminate window, Titan sat slumped on the side of his cot. Though he couldn’t see out, he raised his head toward them, his one eye struggling for focus. Kilmer’s own gaze moved to the overhead vents. They had learned their lesson with Jesse. In addition to the sound waves, a low dose of sleeping gas was being pumped into the containment cell.
Kilmer studied Titan. The man looked so different than when Kilmer had been his assistant director a quarter century earlier. His once-handsome face was now lined and pock-marked. His hair graying.
But Kilmer knew his mind.
“We’ll let the confinement work on him a little longer,” he said. “Once he realizes that any breaks he’s going to get will only come through us, he’ll open up. He’ll tell us who’s running things.”
The way Kilmer saw it, the Champions had scored a colossal victory. They had cleared the board of all their opponent’s chess pieces save one. But as long as the king remained in play, the game wasn’t over.
“Just let me know when he’s ready, sir.”
“I will, Agent.”
Kilmer remained standing before Titan’s cell as Steel’s footfalls snapped away. It took him a moment to realize that Titan was saying something. He reached over and clicked on the speaker beside the door.
“…think you’re saving the world,” Titan slurred. “But all you’ve done is … is screwed it up worse … Witch had the right call…” He broke into drunken laughter. “World’s blind now … balance shot. You’ll see, you … you know-it-all son of a bitch …. You’ll see when all hell rains down.”
Kilmer propped his frowning chin with a fist, a disquiet growing in his gut. He’d heard the rumors about the Soviet breakup, but he wondered now about the black box project they had been working on.
The name alone bothered him: Dead Hand. Coupled with Janis’s earlier premonitions…
Titan’s lips staggered around another wet bout of laughter. He wavered to his feet and smeared a thick finger against the glass.
“You’ll see … Director.”
The series concludes...
XGeneration 7: Dead Hand
on sale now
XGen Mailing List
Sign up for the XGeneration mailing list for info on future releases:
http://bit.ly/xgenlist
Author FB page: facebook.com/bdmagna
Books by Brad Magnarella
PROF CROFT
Demon Moon
XGENERATION
You Don’t Know Me
The Watchers
Silent Generation
Pressure Drop
Cry Little Sister
Greatest Good
Dead Hand
Table of Contents
XGeneration Series
Description
Recap
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
Available Now
Mailing List
Books by Brad Magnarella
XGeneration (Book 6): Greatest Good Page 27