by Pam Eaton
She pulls out what looks like a stun gun from a holster on her ankle and then puts a finger up to her lips to silence me. She slowly opens the door again and inches the top half of her body through. Before I even have time to react, she has already subdued the man by stunning him. As he falls, she slams the butt of the stun gun against his temple. His body goes completely limp. He’s out cold. “Holy…Ania,” I whisper.
She smiles at me and then points to her watch. We need to be quicker if we’re to get out of here unseen. She drags the man into the stairwell. We’ve been in the building too long. Who knows how long we have until someone finds this guy in the stairwell or not at his post?
We proceed down the hall, only slowing down for corners. She’s come rather equipped for this mission, using mirrors on corners, another stun gun poised for use. She stops at a plain-looking gray door. “This is it,” she says as she pulls out the map for me to look at.
It would be ideal if I could transport from another location, but Ania and Gregory are afraid something could go wrong. I sided with them on this, because I could easily end up in enemy hands.
I’ve seen this room a thousand times in my imagination and on a map, but it’s different to be standing right in front of it. Ania got us this far, but I’m the one who needs to go the rest of the way.
I stare at the image on the map and close my eyes. I picture the room: no windows, only one door, a table in the center and rows of computers. I breathe in and out, keeping the image in my mind and focusing on seeing myself in the room as well. When I open my eyes, I see the black box sitting on a table. I grab it quickly.
The sound of typing hits my ears. I’m not alone. Someone is sitting at a computer, but dark hair and dark clothes are all I’m able to see. Something strikes me as odd, though. The smell is familiar, like musty cologne. I’m out of the room before I can even register who I saw, but there’s a familiarity about whoever is in that room. Chills run down my spine and I feel uneasy, but Ania is directing me to hurry down the hall. “Is everything always in a black box?” I ask.
She looks at me, annoyed, tapping her watch, and I slip the shoe-box-size container into my backpack and catch up with her.
We come upon a different set of stairs and head up a few levels. We haven’t yet reached ground level when she starts to slow down, but I blindly trust her to lead us to safety.
We come to another door, but Ania stops, pulls out wire cutters, and then disarms an alarm attached to the door. I’m surprised this door was armed when none of the others were. The sun blinds me for a minute after she opens the door, but I notice we’re at the bottom of a long ramp. We crouch down. Ania tries calling for Tony, but all we hear in our ears is silence. I start getting anxious. “This is taking way too long,” I whisper.
“Just give him a moment, I know he won’t let us down.” Her voice is hushed as well.
Finally there’s a crackling in our earpieces. “The soldiers are still busy with the civilians, and you have a clear shot to the fence,” Tony says.
Ania moves up the ramp slowly and I follow suit, but soon she’s quickly backing up and pushing me back down the ramp. “Tony? Come in Tony are you there?” she asks.
Her eyes never look back toward me, even as she continues to move us. “What’s going on?” I ask.
Static fills our earpieces.
As it continues, her entire body freezes and she slowly turns her gaze back to me, a look of horror crossing her features. Her face is drained of all its color by the time we get back to the bottom of the ramp. She rips off her earpiece. “He—he lied. There are at least a hundred armed soldiers between us and the gate.”
I stumble backwards and fall flat on my butt, then rip out my ear piece too. I hold my head in my hands. What’s going on? Why would he do this to us? She slumps to the ground as if she’s at a loss too. I have no idea what we’re going to do.
“Can we go back through the building?” I ask Ania, my voice taking on a slightly hysterical tone.
She considers the door for a moment. “It’d take too long. Any moment now they’re going to sound an alarm. I’d rather not get trapped in that building.”
How are we going to get out of here alive?
Thirty-Five
Betrayal. The feeling coats me, suffocates me, as we stay crouched down on the cement ramp. The sky above is painted with white puffs amongst a blue sea. It’s beautiful. At least I got to see something beautiful before I died. At least I got to love someone, if only for a moment.
I know I’m not alone in my feelings, because Ania’s face shows signs of pure shock and fear, but mostly anger. How could Tony do this to us? I trusted him, became vulnerable with him. He was my friend and this is the way I’m thanked. I let him in.
A memory flashes before my eyes. He let that man at the bar take me outside, never did a thing to save me. Was he trying to get rid of me then? How am I any threat to him? If I could only go back and not confess all those deep feelings with him, then maybe this wouldn’t cut so deeply. If he could only see us right now, I would have a few choice words for him to read off my lips. But being crouched down here, I highly doubt it. However, now is not the time to play a girl scorned, because looking at Ania, I have no idea what we’re going to do.
I can see that she’s trying to calculate a new plan. At the moment, we’re undetected, but as soon as they discover that the black box is missing, they’ll sound the alarm. This stupid black box. Life and death reside with this abysmal thing. Every special ops team, at least in the movies, has to steal something in a black box. I grab Ania’s wrist and it snaps her back to reality. “So what’s the plan?”
She looks at my hand in confusion. She has no more answers than I do. “I’m not sure yet, but I need to think about this before we make a move. It’ll get too cold when the sun goes down, and we aren’t exactly prepared for temperatures close to freezing. I didn’t think Tony would deceive us like this. I can’t believe Gregory didn’t pick this up.”
Gregory? What did she mean by ‘pick this up’? “How would Gregory know?”
She stares into my eyes. There’s pain reflected in those beautiful eyes of hers, but I can’t tell why. She takes a deep breath and then releases it slowly. “Becca, there’s a lot you don’t know, and I don’t have much time to tell you. So I’m going to be blunt and honest. Gregory can read minds.”
What. The. Hell. Everything seems to still. Is this all I’m going to find at Project Lightning? Treachery from the guys? My heart drops to my stomach. All this time, all the thoughts I’ve had about him, Tony, this entire operation, he’s known what I’m thinking. He’s known my fears and worries. All the times I fantasized that he would just lean in and kiss me—how humiliating! He told me he loved me and for what? To play some sick joke? Do I even know him? How could I have been so wrong?
I snap to attention at what Ania referenced before my thoughts turned selfishly toward my own humiliation. Something isn’t adding up. Gregory should have known if one of us was planning on double crossing. “Wait, could Gregory be in league with Tony? Could someone be using Tony?”
She sits there biting her lip, tapping her finger against her knee. “I doubt it, but I really don’t know. You need to be very careful in Gregory’s presence now. Becca, before we go any further, I need to tell you a few more things. I know this is a lot, but if something happens, you need to know.”
Be careful in his presence? I don’t even know if I want to go anywhere near him. How close does he have to be to read my mind? My thoughts will never be safe.
Ania begins to talk about my mother. Apparently she never trusted Mr. Smith and Project Lightning. “It’s true that after your dad died, she was never the same. I can understand why; she loved him more than anything in this world. His death completely wrecked her, and in her eyes, the only way to cope was through drugs. It was the most selfish path she could have ever taken.
“About two years ago, your mom sought me out. Once she had left the operation, I
never thought I’d hear from her again. Actually, Mr. Smith ordered me not to speak with her at all. How could I say no, though? She was there when my mother died and the best mentor I could have ever asked for. She was the sister I had always wanted.
“We had a system of communication out in the field. It wasn’t standard protocol, but something we devised. She left me three silent voicemails, and the fourth was a wrong number, which was a code leading me where to meet up. Your mom loved her navigational coordinates.”
Anger begins to boil up inside of me. I never even got a birthday card from my mother, but she had a secret code with Ania. Nothing for years—no phone calls or visits, nothing. I clench my fists at the burst of rage.
“When I met up with her, she seemed anxious. Her eyes never fixed on one point, always surveying the area. Your mom knew that she wasn’t going to be alive for much longer. She asked me to make sure I looked after you and told me that when you’re ready, you need to question her death. She didn’t die from an overdose. She’d been clean for a while and was working in a diner at nights. She was clean the day I met with her.”
It’s as if bombs keep going off around me. I grab the coin my pocket. She kept that coin on her. It had to mean something to her. The world is spinning, and I’m waiting for the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Tony’s deceived us, there’s a chance that Gregory has as well, and now Ania tells me that my mom was probably murdered. There’s not much else to lose at this moment, and I need to tell Ania about my dream. “She came to me in my dream on the plane ride to Japan.”
This makes Ania sit straight up.
“She told me to continue trusting you and to try and figure out my dreams. Ania, how is this even possible? She’s dead. There’s no reasonable explanation for her being in my dream.”
She’s still, as if trying to figure something out in her brain. “Some believe that the soul never dies. Our dreams can be the gateway between this world and whatever comes after this life. If you’ve learned anything these past several months, it’s that there are things we don’t understand. We know you’re different, and I bet there’s something in those ancient prophetic scrolls that points toward you.”
Who would have ever thought that I would be able to ‘magically’ appear some place I thought about? It’s too much right now, not to mention the hordes of soldiers waiting at the crest of this hill. I close my eyes and the feeling of being overwhelmed washes over me. Should I pray? Would prayer help me right now? It couldn’t hurt.
Ania places a hand on my shoulder. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“Flickering.”
We stay crouched on the ground and I continue to watch Ania trying to figure out something to do. I know she’s running game plans in her mind. Where do we go from here? “Why don’t I just transport the both of us?”
I had done it with Tony that one time.
“Tony almost died when you guys did that. What if we get caught or, heaven forbid, Gregory actually deceived us? If I’m weak, who knows what the consequences could be, especially if we need to run? Your emotions are all over the place and I can’t let them take both of us. It’s too risky.”
“We should still try.” My words are little more than a hiss.
The sun’s sliding behind the mountains, and the sky still shows a brilliant hue of red and orange. I don’t know how long we’ve been out here, but it feels like hours, and I can feel that the temperature has been steadily dropping. The sound of footsteps echoes somewhere above us raises an alarm in my mind. What if they find us hiding here? Finally, Ania’s body sags a little and she reaches into her pockets, pulling out two grenades. My jaw drops.
“This is what we’re going to do. We’re going to crest the top of the hill. As soon as we do, you’re to run to the south and make for the rendezvous point. Do you understand?”
Is she insane? What if I can’t get there fast enough? What’s the plan with the grenades? I raise an eyebrow at her. “What are you going to be doing?”
She squares her shoulders and a firm resolution settles into her eyes. “I’ll be the distraction. I can fight them off without a problem; you can’t. We did not come this far to fail. I’m your mentor as well, and this responsibility falls to me. You’re to meet up with Gregory and fulfill this mission.”
“But what if he…” I don’t want to voice it. I don’t want to say the words and make them true.
“We don’t know anything. But if there’s anything wrong, you get the hell out of there. You run.”
Her voice is so determined and stern. I don’t dare defy her right now. Given all that I feel, she’s right. No matter how much I try to argue with her, she’s right. We check over our weapons and the precious cargo in my backpack. Ania pulls out a letter and hands it to me. “Before every mission I embark on, I write a letter to my daughter. I want you to give this to her if something happens to me. She never needs to know how I died, only that I went down with a fight. I also want you to make the same promise that I made to your mother. Take care of my daughter.”
Death is a part of life, but without my parents, Ania is the only one who has helped me through Project Lightning. Now that I don’t think I can trust Tony or Gregory, who do I have to turn to? I told her myself that she was the big sister I always wanted. I take the letter and put it into a small pocket inside my shirt. “I promise, Ania.”
I may say those words, but what I really want to do is shove the letter back into her face and tell her to give her daughter the letter herself. I don’t want to be the one to tell someone that their mother is dead. Giving me this letter is a death knell, and I don’t want to be a part of that. But I’ve promised her I’ll watch out for her daughter, and I refuse to fail her.
We begin slowly moving up the cement ramp and I try my best to stay within the shadows. An alarm begins to sound. Boots pound on the pavement up ahead. Either they just realized that the black box is missing or they found the man in the stairwell.
As we crest the top of the ramp, she signals me to start hugging the building and heading south. She moves from her crouched position and stands up straight with both grenades in her outstretched hands. What…?
In front of her stands an army lined up in their ranks and ready for orders. Some start to take notice and yell in a foreign language. She pulls the pins out of both grenades with her teeth and coolly walks forward. I stop and stare at her. What on earth is she planning on doing? How is she so calm? Maybe this is just a distraction. Hopefully. Just a distraction.
Making my way along the side of the building, I can see the gate about a hundred yards in the distance, but I stop to see what Ania’s doing. She’s still walking at a steady pace toward the soldiers and they finally take notice of what she’s clutching in both hands. Anger has left their screams and is being replaced by confusion and fear. Ania starts screaming something in Polish, and she’s running at full speed into the center of the regiment, swinging her arms like they’re battering rams. Men go flying in all directions and more try to fill in the gap, but she kicks them, sending them into the other men. Her hands are still clutching the grenades, but her whole body is a weapon. The sound of gun shots blazes over the screams of the soldiers.
I bite down on my lip hard to choke back a sob. I know this is my cue to get the heck out of here. I can’t watch anymore.
I start running as fast as I can for the gate. If I could just picture the rendezvous point, I’d be out of here, but there’s too much going on. I can’t seem to trigger my powers; my emotions and adrenaline are out of control right now. The gate is only a few yards ahead of me and currently unmanned, since every soldier is either trying to find cover or defuse Ania, and that’s when I feel it.
The explosion sends me flying into the fence and I land with a thud. There’s ringing in my ears. The coppery tang of blood fills my mouth. Those were not normal grenades. There’s no way they would have sent me flying like that. Ania must have made them more powerful.
I roll off the fence and lie on the ground, trying to regain my equilibrium as the sorrow begins to wash over me.
Ania. She just sacrificed herself for me. Tears begin to roll down my cheeks, but the feeling of my backpack reminds me that I need to keep moving. I can’t break down now. I have a mission to fulfill as well as a promise to her.
I push myself off the fence. My body screams in pain. Crap, I think I broke a rib. All the sounds around me seem muffled and I have no idea if anyone is heading after me, but I take off.
I run through the streets that were filled with tourists and festivities only a short time earlier. Chaos is my cover now. People are running through the streets as if more bombs are going to start falling out of the sky. The rendezvous point is only a few more streets away.
I round a corner and make for the waiting SUV. Gregory is hanging out the door beckoning for me to run faster. I can’t make out what he’s saying. He’s pointing behind me and I see them hot on my heels. There are about five Humvees chasing after me, with soldiers leaning out the windows. The SUV starts moving and I scream at Gregory to wait for me. “Please!!” I beg.
He’s still hanging out of the door. “Come on, Becca, move it!”
I try so hard to imagine myself inside the SUV sitting right next to Gregory, but fear and urgency keep washing over me. I flicker and for an instant I think I’m sitting behind the driver’s seat, but I’m back running on the pavement. My body is screaming in pain with every step I take. The SUV speeds up, and I’m only inches from the tailgate. Gregory is pleading with me to get into the car. “I can’t do it. Slow down and let me in!”