The Escape

by Teyla Branton

  Emerson’s breath came faster. “Please, help him. Help us.”

  “Of course we will.” I reached for my coat over the arm of the couch, removing a syringe with a smaller needle and handing it to Keene. By the size, he’d know what it was for. “They probably want Brody to give them your genealogy records, but as long as those records aren’t here, they have no reason to break in right away. The records aren’t here, are they?” Of course, I already knew they were upstairs in his safe, and my whole premise was absurd, because the Emporium’s main goal would be to get Brody and convince him to work for them, knowing he could get the records later. Only our presence—Renegade presence—would make them act earlier, but in Emerson’s highly emotional state, I doubted he’d notice details.

  Emerson choked. “They’re—they’re . . . oh, they’re in my safe.” He thought about the safe behind the picture above the fireplace in his upstairs bedroom, and I could see the combination in his mind. Interesting what a little suggestion could do.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll help you. We’re all in this together.”

  A sudden gasp cut through the silence in the room. All heads turned toward Brody, who was breathing now, his eyes rolling in fear. A ghastly hoarse sound came from his throat.

  “It’s okay,” his father soothed, patting his hand. “It’s okay. Rest. You’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t try to talk yet.” Keene was already in place behind Emerson. “You’ll heal soon enough.” He lowered the needle into Emerson’s neck, pressing the plunger.

  “What? Wh—” Emerson keeled over, sprawling across his son.

  Keene dropped to his knees next to Brody. “Sleep,” he said, injecting a larger portion of liquid from the syringe into Brody. “This will help with the pain.”

  Brody lapsed back into unconsciousness, though with his accelerated metabolism and the curequick, it wouldn’t last long. I knelt between him and his father, placing a hand on Emerson’s forehead and pushing my thoughts down. Instantly I was in his mind. Instead of the sand stream of thoughts that existed during consciousness, a lake glistened below me. I dove inside the liquid, swimming deeper. Most unconscious minds were symbolized by lakes, but a few weren’t and I was happy not to have to learn a new system. Bubbles containing thoughts circled around me and I carefully extracted a few: Mari shifting, his later thoughts about her, the needle going into his neck. The memory segments were short and his attention so riveted on his son, that I doubted he’d even notice their absence. I was tempted to remove the entire meeting, but that would leave a black hole he’d certainly question. Besides, he needed to know about his son.

  Seconds later, I was diving into the lake of Brody’s mind, extracting only the very last memory of seeing his father drugged. It wasn’t more than a glimpse and he wouldn’t miss it. I could see from the memories that he’d been conscious for a few minutes before he’d started breathing and the sensation had terrified him. I left that. He needed to learn that part of being Unbounded as well as the rest.

  As I searched for the memory of Mari’s first shift, something interesting caught my attention. In his mind, I was glowing in the hallway and as I sat on the couch. Odd that I hadn’t noticed this before when I’d been in his mind. Energy seemed to pour off me. I resumed my search and found more energy, this time leaking from Mari as she shifted over to Emerson.

  Only when she used her ability. I’d been using mine almost the entire time.

  Curious, I moved further into his past, dodging memories as they floated by. I quickly found what I was looking for: me at the fundraiser when our eyes met. I was glowing, though less noticeably. More brightness came from the electric cables, floodlights, and other equipment around the photographer’s backdrop, the greater the energy expended, the more the object glowed.

  Odd.

  Back further. This time Brody was looking at Patrick Mann by the fundraiser door. Patrick was also glowing, brighter than I had been. Using his ability?

  At least that explained why Brody had singled us out. Something about energy translated to him as light. This could relate to his Unbounded gift—whatever it was. Maybe he really wasn’t involved with the Emporium. Not one of the memory bubbles hinted at such.

  A crash reverberating in my physical ears broke my concentration, and I stroked upward, out of the water and opened my eyes, removing my hand from Brody. Checking mentally, I saw that the four Unbounded watching the townhouse from outside were still in their original places.

  “That came from upstairs,” Keene said.

  “The safe!” I leapt to my feet and grabbed Mari’s hand. If I’d been able to see the combination to the safe in Emerson’s mind, could the other sensing Unbounded have done the same? “Drop your shield. We need to shift upstairs. I’ll show you where.”

  She nodded eagerly. “Okay.”

  “But—”

  Before Keene finished we were gone, appearing in the room I’d seen in Emerson’s mind. I kept my link with Mari, throwing up a shield for both of us and hoping such a thing was even possible. It felt possible, if the ache at the base of my skull was any indication.

  Another fireplace was alight here, this time a real wood one with a chimney. A large picture lay against the wall, and the safe was open. A slight figure with short, tight blond curls turned from the safe, completely dark to my mental senses. I was so accustomed to seeing life forces in every living being, even blocking ones, that for a moment my mind wouldn’t register the presence.

  The figure turned, its movements exuding confidence like any other Unbounded. At first I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, but by the lack of breasts, I decided on a man. Or an older boy. His crunched features told me he was a product of a forced early Change, so though he looked seventeen or eighteen, he could be over a hundred by now. Because his Change was forced, his life expectancy would be closer to four hundred rather than two thousand. At least that was how it worked with the other forced Unbounded I knew.

  I pushed my thoughts toward him, finding a tremendous black wall shielding his mind. I’d never seen the like. The surface of it whorled as if it had a life of its own.

  “Hello,” the man said. “I guess you heard the crash. You didn’t see me there in his mind, did you? I’m good at that. I saw you, but not what you were thinking, so that was kind of impressive. Not as impressive as me hiding from you, of course. But I bet not even Delia could break into your mind without a serious distraction.” His voice wasn’t deep, but definitely male and slightly nasal.

  “Too bad you’re so clumsy.” I slid my finger onto the trigger of my gun.

  He shrugged. “Who knew the painting was so heavy?”

  “Give me that disk.” We couldn’t let him take the information back to the Emporium. I didn’t want more deaths on my hands.

  “No.” His smile held no amusement. “I’ve heard so much about you from Delia, but besides the shielding, you aren’t much, are you? I think she’s made a mistake not telling the rest of the Triad the truth about your ability, but she won’t listen to me.” He waved the disk. “Maybe after today she will.”

  Something was odd about his shield. A thick cord ran from it, leaving the Unbounded’s body and trailing to a broken window some ten feet away. The cord reminded me of the black snake I’d found in Patrick Mann’s thoughts.

  But what’s it connected to? I guessed the answer even as the thought came. To his partner. Unbounded didn’t usually work alone.

  I skimmed along the cord, finding the other Unbounded seconds before he climbed into the room. With all my force, I sliced at the cord, felt it sever. I shoved my thoughts at the Unbounded. Without the protection of the sensing Unbounded, his mind was all mine.

  A knife hurtled past me, but I was already moving, anticipating the movement. The new Unbounded was about Keene’s size and his ability was obviously combat. A fair match for me given that I could use both his ability and my own.

  Wait. I whirled, jumping behind a chair as the sensing U
nbounded near the safe fired in my direction. With a crack, his silenced bullet buried itself in the wall behind where I’d been standing. I raised my pistol, but Mari was already there next to him, slicing with her knife. His pistol fell to the ground. I turned back to my own opponent—only to have my gun kicked out of my hands.

  I threw up a block and snap kicked at his stomach, following with a right hook. He slammed a kick to my thigh and a blow to my shoulder, but the movements left him wide open. I jabbed my fingers into his throat. Too bad I couldn’t get to my ballistic knife at the moment. He fell, and I kicked hard, readying myself to pounce, but a silent cry burst from Mari’s mind.

  Spinning, I saw her, the disk from the safe in her hands, but she was unmoving, her face grimacing in pain. The shield! I’d dropped it with my concentration, and the sensing Unbounded was in her mind, holding her in place with an impressive show of mental force. Physically, he was several feet away, his chest bleeding from her knife. I saw Mari’s gun on the floor by the fireplace poker.

  I thrust out my thoughts, crashing into the Unbounded in her mind. Shoving a pulse of light at him, I threw up a shield around Mari, mimicking the thick one I’d seen around his own mind. His fury lashed out as his thoughts careened backward, but slammed uselessly against the outside of the shield. Mari’s relief made me momentarily weak. She took a step.

  Shift! I told her. Get out now.

  Even as I thought the words, agony dug into my back. I sucked in a breath filled with pain—or tried to. My lungs no longer seemed to work. White hot agony filled my awareness.

  Everything seemed to happen at once. Mari arching and falling toward the fireplace. Me sending a pulse of light to the combat Unbounded behind me. His wrenching pain. The sensing Unbounded running toward Mari, a recovered pistol in his hands. Mari tossing the disk into the fire. The Unbounded reaching for it. Burning his hand. Dropping the blackened, melted disk once more into the greedy flames. Keene appearing in the doorway and more silenced shots as the sensing man sprinted toward the window, dragging his companion with him. More pain filling my mind as Keene’s bullet found a target.

  Blackness consumed my physical sight, but I was still mentally with Mari as she shifted next to me. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I couldn’t answer. Why wasn’t she bleeding? I’d seen her hit, hadn’t I?

  “Erin,” Keene spoke close to my face, “you have to shift out of here with Mari. She can’t take you all that way on her own. Concentrate. Can you do it?”

  I nodded. Mari and I were still so strongly linked, that I doubted I could separate myself from her if I tried. Something to do with my mega shield that still covered her mind. Almost, it seemed to be keeping me inside her.

  “Shift to the car,” Keene said.

  “What about you?” Mari’s breath came in gasps. “They’ll be back with reinforcements.”

  “I’ll meet you out front, but if they’re in view, don’t stop for me.”

  Mari gripped my hand. “Ready, Erin?”

  Ready, I told her.

  The next minute I saw numbers. Lots of numbers. I felt Mari’s joy in how they fell perfectly into place. So easily. Here and there . . . and then we were gone from the bedroom and in the car, with perhaps half of a heartbeat of time in between.

  “I hope you have the keys,” Mari said.

  “My pocket.” The pain had miraculously eased during that half heartbeat when we were neither here nor there, and I could see clearly again, but moving would probably restart the agony.

  “Where are the Emporium agents?” Mari asked, digging for the keys. “Are they outside the building?”

  With effort, I pulled my mind from hers to check, the shifting seeming to have righted my sense of self. “Yeah. Still in the same place. No. Two are moving now. They’re crossing and going around the corner. They can’t be leaving.”

  “Bet they’re going to help those other agents. That’s where the bedroom is located.”

  I took her word for it. She could also add pages of numbers without a machine and she pretty much always knew the time from a running count in her head.

  Mari started the engine with too much gas, the roar sounding like a beacon that shouted out our location. “Keene shot at least one of them,” she said, “and the one who had the disk is bleeding pretty badly. The jerk. He deserved it. Not sure how they got up to the second floor window.”

  “The other two are still in their car out front. Let’s get going before their friends come back.”

  Our car lurched forward. “I’m sorry about the disk,” she said, a catch in her voice.

  “They didn’t get it. That’s the important thing.” I also felt sick about the disk, but it was only one of several copies, and if Mari hadn’t thrown it into the fire, it would be in Emporium hands now, which was far worse.

  She picked up speed as she drove toward Emerson’s townhouse. Through my slowly returning vision, I could make out the car where the Emporium agents sat, not twenty feet from the stairway to the house. This was going to be close. The only thing on our side was surprise. Hopefully their companions who’d been inside had told them that both of us had been shot. It was possible they didn’t know I could piggyback on someone else’s ability, so even if Mari was sound enough to shift out, they would still expect me to be inside.

  Not that I’d be much help to Mari in my condition. Every movement was torture, and I was having a problem breathing. Then again, maybe I could reach the Emporium agents’ minds, maybe stop them if they tried to get out of the car.

  First I had to find the strength. I began to absorb as fast as possible.

  “Hurry, Keene,” Mari muttered as she came to a stop.

  I wondered if he was coming at all. Maybe he wanted us to get away and had told Mari to leave, knowing the Emporium agents would be in front waiting and hoping she would obey him and not stop. Yet neither of us were prepared to leave him behind. At the same time, I didn’t dare expend energy trying to find him mentally. I was already close to collapse.

  The agents’ shields were nowhere near as strong as the sensing Unbounded’s—a good thing since shards of glass seemed to be nestled inside my back and chest, making it difficult to focus. I pushed hard but the shield of the first agent only bounced back. I had nowhere near the energy it’d take to break it down. If only I had something strong to hit it with. In frustration, I conjured up a mental image of my machete and hit the shield again. I was in!

  “There he is.” Mari’s voice came from far away.

  Not daring to move my head and lose my concentration, I saw Keene not with my eyes but as a life force moving down the stairs. Far too slowly. He wasn’t going to make it. The second agent reached for the door. I slammed my machete again and I was inside him, too. His foot stepped onto the pavement as he reached for his gun. Keene was at the bottom of the stairs.

  I mentally grabbed at the agent’s arm, much as I had pushed at Oliver’s hand that morning. But I was too spent, and he hesitated only briefly before the gun started rising. The other agent stepped from the car.

  No! I swung the imaginary machete at them and light pulsed from the tip. I felt more than saw them grab at their heads.

  The next second our car was in motion, tires squealing on the pavement. The last thing I heard before I lost consciousness was the door slamming.

  THE SOFT SCRAPE OF A sword leaving its scabbard woke me. I was lying on my stomach naked from the waist up. Grabbing at the sheet covering me, I sat up too quickly, trying to see in the dark. I felt Ritter before I recognized the infirmary, and I let out a sigh of relief. Mari had gotten us to the safe house.

  “Did I wake you?” Ritter asked, his tone too casual. In the dim light coming from the open door, I could see the gleam of his sword as he rubbed it with a cloth.

  “What happened?” There was no pain in my chest, but I felt a buzz that told me I’d been given curequick, and probably more than once if I was healed and the high remained.

  His hand stilled
on the sword. “What part? When you disobeyed Ava’s order and took Keene with you this morning? Or when you almost got yourself killed trying to get the Hunters’ records? What happened to shifting out at the first sign of danger?”

  “I did what any of us would have done to preserve our cover and mitigate damages.” I swung my bare feet over the edge of the bed, adjusting my position. No pain meant someone had operated on me and taken out the bullet so I could heal faster. It sometimes took days to expel bullets on your own. With Dimitri away in Massachusetts, I was betting Ritter had done the operation. He seemed to excel at taking bullets from my body.

  Ritter didn’t respond, so I continued, “Look, I made a decision I felt would give the fastest return. As for the records, at least we stopped the Emporium from getting them.”

  “It might have been our last opportunity for months to grab those records.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? But if I was able to get the combination from him so fast, don’t you think the Emporium would have as well once they made contact with his son?”

  In two steps Ritter was next to me, moving so fast I didn’t see him put down the sword. He smelled of soap and clean clothes, so at some point he’d had a chance to wash up after his day of work and my operation. As usual, he was dressed in black and looked as dangerous as any weapon. He opened his mouth to speak but closed it again. Frustration leaked from him. What did he want?

  “I used the ballistic knife,” I said. “You’ll be happy to know it works great. Shot out of the housing perfectly.”

  He sank beside me, a reluctant smile curving one corner of his mouth. “So I heard. Good shot, by the way.”