by Marnee Blake
He should have said something to her. Now, worrying about her, his senses heightened in this dangerous space, he wished he’d told her that she had heard wrong earlier in the hall with Kitty. Whether he was a bad choice for her or not, it was wrong to let her believe she was the one lacking.
He’d tell her when this was over.
He tapped his microphone again. Still nothing. Come on, Beth. Where are you?
The lights flickered back on. He breathed a sigh of relief. A kid—maybe twenty-two—stepped up to the podium. He introduced himself then started droning on.
Luke had already heard every iteration of this speech from Parker. This version contained the same brand of fire and brimstone. A whole lot of, “This is our time,” and, “We are the chosen ones.” He even threw in a little, “We are giving you a chance to reach your true potential.” Luke tuned him out. Parker gave this pep talk better than this newbie.
Around him, though, two dozen people listened to the man at the makeshift microphone, rapt. Was this how fanaticism was born? Their hope that this—whatever this was—would solve their problems was almost painful. Didn’t any of them wonder why this sounded too good to be true?
They all looked so normal. Probably worked regular jobs, had families, watched sitcoms. This group was all gamers, he assumed, or they wouldn’t have found the invitation on the gamer forum.
The guy speaking and another standing guard near the door were running the meeting. If they were going for an impressive venue, they missed the mark in this abandoned office building. Cast-off supplies were pushed up against the wall—old printers, a few monitors, a pencil sharpener—all covered in a fine layer of dust. There were no windows in here. Long fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, buzzing.
As he took it all in, he caught sight of Beth in the back. He jerked, rising halfway out of his seat before he caught himself. Goddamn it, what was she doing here? Her eyes were wide and her mouth tight. She tried to wave surreptitiously and failed.
Beth probably didn’t know how to be stealthy.
He cocked his head, the back of his neck prickling. This wasn’t the place for her. She didn’t have any powers, which was why she’d stayed in the van, where she’d be safe.
Glancing down, he shuffled to the end of the aisle, doing his best impression of someone who was going to the restroom. He hunched, hurrying to the back and sliding into the empty seat beside her.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he hissed at her. “Why didn’t you call?” Why had she put herself in danger? He continued to survey the room, her presence intensifying his worry.
“Coms don’t work,” she breathed. “But Jack—he’s in the building.”
Fury burned a hot trail into his stomach. Their eyes held for a moment. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
After searching her face for that truth, he exhaled the breath he’d been holding. With it, he realized how much it would destroy him if she’d been hurt. Jack… He was dangerous. If he had any idea who she was, what she meant to him…
“Go back to the van.”
“We need to get these people out.” Stubbornness firmed her jaw.
He gritted his teeth, doing his best to keep calm when he wanted to yell. “You need to get to safety.” Her intelligence wouldn’t help her here, not against changed soldiers. “I can’t do this unless I know you’re safe. Let Kenny and I do our jobs.”
Glaring, she returned her attention to the people around them, still listening to the man at the podium. “Fine.”
His eyes drifted closed briefly under the weight of his relief. “Thank you.”
Her scowl said she wasn’t pleased. “I’ll meet you outside.” He shifted to stand, then stopped. He hated leaving her with so much unsaid between them, but now wasn’t the time. “Be safe.”
She stood, turning her back on him. He let her go.
Across the room, he met Kenny’s gaze. He made a swirling, “round them up” motion with his finger. Nodding, Kenny stood, and the two men in charge of this fiasco flew backward, hitting the wall in the front as his friend yelled, “Everyone get out of here now!”
The place erupted into screams and shuffling as Luke shifted to his feet, his seat scratching on the linoleum as he pushed back. He covered the distance to the exit at a run, pushing the glass door open.
He needed to get to Jack. As he strode into the hall, leaving the chaos behind him, Beth’s face flittered through his mind, and he prayed to God that she’d listened to him and gotten out of there.
Like most office buildings, the room they were in opened onto a hallway. Four closed doors lined it. With quick mental thrusts, he opened the doors as he passed. Wood splintered on one as he broke a lock, and he ducked to avoid the shards.
The first three rooms had been empty, dusty even, as he’d expect in an abandoned building. But he found what he was looking for behind the door that had been locked.
Jack and two other men.
He paralyzed them all.
Stepping in, checking all the corners, he didn’t find anyone else. Surveillance equipment was strewn across a folding table along with a variety of weapons: guns, knives, and even a bow. On the floor sat a machine he didn’t recognize. It was covered in wires, and there appeared to be a cone-shaped light.
He unfroze Jack’s head. “What the hell is this thing?”
“You got my notes.” Jack’s smile was smug. “Good to see you.”
It took Luke a second to figure out what he meant. Then he remembered the Boy Scout Code. He wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of asking, of playing along in his game. Gesturing to the machine, he stared Jack down. “What is this?”
Jack clicked his tongue. “Luke, Luke… What makes you think I’ll make it that easy for you?”
The bulk of the apparatus was a cylinder with copper wiring. It wasn’t big, maybe the size of a recliner. He sifted through his mental collection of devices. Remembering the power outage, how the communication went down, and that people’s phones weren’t working in the meeting room helped. “This is an electromagnetic pulse generator.”
“You were always so smart.”
“My God.” He rubbed his forehead. “The outage. You killed the power. And,” he yanked his phone from his pocket. It was dead, too. “Everyone’s phones.”
“And all of your surveillance.”
That explained why Beth had come in to find him. He hadn’t paused to consider why she hadn’t sent him a text.
“Why? The power’s on now. You must know that we’ll be able to contact the authorities. They’ve probably already been called.”
“The rest of the power is still out.” He glanced toward the window facing the back of the building. “Generator, outside.”
“Generator.” That meant they were only running some of the electricity in this building. Outside the window, there was only darkness.
“The street will be down through the night, I bet. It’ll take time for them to find the problem and replace the circuits that are fried. And everyone’s phones are toast.”
Luke racked his brain, trying to figure out the end game. They wanted power to the meeting, but nowhere else. “Why?”
“Why do you think?” Jack rolled his eyes. The gesture was so typically Jack it suspended the moment between the present and the past, dragging Luke back to high school, to grade school. The only thing missing was the “duh” he would have added then. Except then he would have been bullying someone or getting into trouble. Now he was returning entire city blocks to the dark ages.
Focus.
Luke moved around the room, rubbing his forehead. No communication. That was a given, one of the major reasons to bring down the tech in the area. Besides that, why would they go through this much trouble? The last time they’d had one of these meetings, they’d poisoned everyone in one fell swoop. Killing phones meant no calls to 911. Made sense. What else? Ele
ctromagnetic pulse generators were difficult to build. This machine didn’t look light. It must have been a pain in the ass to get up here.
“What am I missing?” he muttered, thinking out loud.
“Popularity? Sex appeal?” Jack suggested, smirking. “A father?”
The rage Luke kept so firmly bottled exploded. He could have used his power, but it felt better to bury his knuckles in Jack’s face.
It was the way he’d mentioned Luke’s dad: smug and full of disdain.
His old neighbor dropped to the ground. But, in his distraction to punch Jack, he’d forgotten to hold him still. Jack moved fast, and in a moment, he was on him. His return punch flung Luke’s head back, and pain erupted along the left side of his face.
Luke struggled to keep his eyes open. He couldn’t use his powers without his sight, and Jack knew that. With his left eye already swelling shut, he forced his right one to remain open, throwing Jack off with a mental shrug. He hit the wall across the room hard, slumping to the floor again, wiping at his face. Luke froze him again.
“Luke. This has been fun.” He smiled even as blood trickled from the side of his mouth. “But, you’re wasting valuable time, don’t you think?”
Luke stilled, his breath still coming fast from his outburst. Beth, Kenny… They were back there. Alone. But Jack could lead them to Parker. He couldn’t let him get away. Now that he’d found them, he’d go back, help Kenny keep everyone from taking the drug, and then deliver Jack to Martins.
He couldn’t leave Jack and these other guys here, awake, though. They were reinforcements for the guys running the meeting. He would need to neutralize their threat first.
Calculating, he lifted them, nearly to the ceiling. Jack said nothing, but the grim line of his mouth said he wasn’t looking forward to whatever came next. The other two weren’t used to being thrown around. They yelped, as he moved them, and screeched as they dropped. When they hit the ground with a dull thud, it knocked them out. Jack was a little stronger, though, so Luke had to lift and drop him twice more until he was out.
The entire process of rendering the three of them unconscious should have made him feel something. Uncomfortable? Guilty? But as he stood in the room with their still bodies on the floor in front of him, he felt nothing. He’d needed to keep them stationery, and he’d accomplished his task.
There wasn’t much in this room to secure them. With a tug, he pulled some of the copper wiring from the EMP. He flipped all of the men over, looping the wire around their arms in the best knot he could manage.
He left them lying there and hurried down the hall. Yanking on the door of the meeting room, he found it jammed. When he pulled again, he realized it wasn’t jammed but locked. That’s when he caught sight of the scene inside through the glass.
The view was grisly. People were falling or lying on the ground, many of them throwing up. Their faces were nearly identical masks of agony.
As he surveyed it all, his breathing hitched. Please God, let Beth be in the van.
Kenny stood in the midst of the horror, his face intent and focused on the two men who’d been at the podium earlier. Around him, furniture, decor from the walls, the podium, all of it was flying in the air, bouncing around as if it were caught in a tornado. Some of the moving furniture was Kenny’s doing. He was telekinetic, like Luke. But at least one of the meeting’s hosts was a mover as well.
With a mental push, Luke threw the door behind him. The air that wafted out of the meeting room was sour, tangy. Like lemon but more bitter. He gagged as he stepped inside, yanking the collar of his shirt up to cover his mouth and nose.
As he surveyed the confusion in front of him, two things were clear and almost equally horrifying.
First, the attendees of this meeting—and probably the first—hadn’t all decided to drink Solvimine at the same time. Jack and Parker must have devised a way to pump the drug into the air.
Second, Beth hadn’t gone back to the surveillance van. In the back of the room, she writhed on the ground, gagging.
Chapter Nine
He ran, dodging flying furniture, and skidded to kneel beside her. “Beth.”
Seeing her curled into a ball, her face twisted in distress, tangled his insides and sent everything into his throat. It was part déjà vu, part something new and agonizingly awful.
Her pain-filled eyes met his. “Drug. Airborne.” How could she focus at all? The pain had to be ripping her body apart. That wasn’t something he’d forget.
Beth was tougher than him, though.
He’d already pieced that together, so he shushed her. “Save your strength. We have to get you out of here.” She gagged again, moaning. With his power, he moved a table, angling it so that they were covered and protected from the debris flying around the room. Damn EMP. Thanks to it and his dead phone, he was cut off. No one was coming for them.
Battling the urge to act, he forced himself to breathe, to think around his concern for Beth. If not, he’d drown in his fury and be no help at all. They needed a plan. The sooner he and Kenny got Beth—got all of them—out of here, the better chance they would have to survive.
And she had to survive.
He glanced at Beth. Unable to resist, he ran his hand along her back, knowing that nothing he did would give her comfort. Not in this. But he couldn’t keep himself from holding the connection for just a moment longer.
God, he would take this from her if he could.
His fingers lingering on her back, he scanned the room again, this time forcing himself to table all his emotions and focus on the necessities.
The organizers of the meeting continued lobbing things at Kenny. It had probably only been a minute since Luke burst in, but it had been long enough for Kenny to take some real damage. His face was bruising, and he bled from a handful of places.
Luke directed his attention to locking down the stuff flying around, and found out why Kenny hadn’t moved and neither had the other two combatants. Luke was immediately paralyzed as soon as he interfered. Definitely another telekinetic involved, then.
His eyes were still his own, though, so he could still use his power. From there, the battle became more vicious, a barrage of flying projectiles thrown around by telekinetics who couldn’t move. Things hit the attendees on the ground, collateral damage. A chair barreled into Luke’s side, and the pain of it shot along his spine.
This needed to stop. It solved nothing, and every moment they were distracted was a moment they couldn’t help the attendees.
Apparently, one of the organizers agreed because, somehow—Luke didn’t see—he managed to light the contents of a wastepaper basket on fire. The fire caught quickly, licking out of the trash can and igniting the wall coverings.
Frantic, Luke searched the room for something that could smother the flames, but there weren’t any fabrics or blankets, only paneling. It was an office building. Everything was paper or industrial material.
Which meant it would all go up in smoke faster.
Abruptly, the other men were free. Kenny must have dropped them in his concern about the fire. They scurried, falling over themselves as they headed for the door. Then, they were gone.
With their departure, Luke was free.
“Kenny!” he yelled. “Go. After them. I’ve got this.” Kenny nodded, following the other two.
Luke wasn’t about to leave this room. Not with Beth here.
He raced to the trash can, hurling overturned chairs, a desk, and a variety of office equipment out of his way, springing over a few attendees who were rolled on their sides. Grabbing the bottom of the can, he upended the contents then unzipped his jacket. He stomped on the flames as he shrugged out of the coat, tossing it down to smother the fire. When he’d reduced the bulk of it to embers, he patted the coat to put out whatever had ignited on the fabric, and then he went to work on the flames licking up the walls. He worked as fast as he could. Faintly, he registered that he was sustaining burns on his hands and his face, but he ignored a
ll of that.
The other occupants of the room didn’t notice what he was doing, all caught in the web of Solvimine and having retreated to the recesses of their minds. He noticed that they were quiet now, when they’d been groaning earlier. I’m their only hope. If I don’t stop this, they’ll die.
Sweet Beth. He had to save her.
The magnitude of the responsibility made him kick up his effort, and he worked with the furor of a cornered man.
Finally, he appeared to be winning. As he smothered the last flames, he bent over, gasping. Still wheezing, he turned. Around him, two dozen people were in various stages of their changes, thanks to the Solvimine.
Swooping Beth into his arms, he pressed her against him. It didn’t seem to give her any comfort, because she moaned, rolling her head to the side. But it soothed him.
“I’ll be back.” He told the rest of them. “Right back.” They probably couldn’t hear him, but he said the words anyway.
Tucking her closer, he rushed into the hallway, his boots squeaking on the linoleum. He hustled down the stairs, holding Beth to his chest and finally bursting onto the street outside.
Dave, the surveillance tech who’d accompanied them, was bent over Kenny’s still body. His arms tightening around Beth, Luke ground to a halt. Oh God, not Kenny…
“Is he…” He didn’t finish the question because he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer.
Dave shook his head. “No. He’s alive, but unconscious. And severely injured.” He swallowed. “They threw him.” The other man seemed overcome. He didn’t have to finish. Luke could only imagine how far they threw him.
Dave glanced at Beth. “Is she…”
“She’s alive.” His voice was unnecessarily forceful, as if saying the words strongly enough would make it remain true.
“They’re gone. They took off that way.” He motioned in the direction of the interstate. “With that man, Jack.”
Luke dropped to one knee, gently placing Beth beside Kenny on the sidewalk. He smoothed the crazy curls that had fallen on her forehead. They were wet, sweaty. She mumbled, folding in on herself before she gagged. His stomach twisted, as if he might be sick, too. “They’ve adapted Solvimine. They released it into the air, and she was affected.”