“Is it the new girl?” Kila asked when he didn’t answer right away. “Isn’t she a bit old for you?”
Pitch shrugged. “It’s not that, Kila. You know me better than that. Spooky…”
Back in the Legion, Kila’s best friend was a girl who went by the nickname Spooky. They had similar gifts. Kila knew the future, and Spooky knew the truth. Sometimes, they might both know about the same thing. Other times, their gifts diverged wildly.
Kila came to the Sons of Thunder.
Spooky stayed with the Legion.
So when Pitch brought her up, the only thing she could say was, “I miss her, too.”
Pitch’s crush on Spooky had been legendary in the Legion. He dashed across the dining hall to get to the last free seat near her, he lingered in places she liked, hoping to talk to her, and when they were both in Chojin Ken training together, Pitch used to do anything to win in front of her.
“You were her best friend. Do you think she would have gone out with me?”
“Aw Pitch…”
The conversation fell off for a while. Eventually, Kila started it up again.
“Look Pitch. We’re here now. I’m a Daughter of Thunder, you’re a Son. Maybe someday Spooky will be, too. If we can come over, so can she. When she comes, ask her out. But ask her, not me. She’d murder me if she thought I went and told you stuff she and I said to each other about boys.”
“That new girl asked me about why I left the Legion. It got me thinking… well, you know. Hope and Drake.”
That caused another long silence. Kila didn’t really know what to say. Of all the terrible things the Legion required of people, that had been the worst. Finally, she tried to comfort him.
“We were all in the Legion, Pitch. You, me, Spooky. We all share the blame for what happened to Hope. All the stuff we did while we were in the Legion is like that; we’re all equally responsible. When you went out on missions, bad things happened. But who do you think generated those orders? Spooky and I, with our gifts for knowing things. Whatever you feel guilty about, Spooky and I both took part in it.
“That’s what Sons of Thunder means to me, Pitch. It means a second chance. You know me. I’m not super devout like Anna and Renee. But that’s what I’ve picked up here so far, from listening to them, and from theology classes with Mr. Moses. He calls it redeeming things. Taking something bad, and redirecting it to good. God’s about second chances. He’s about taking the stuff we’ve done wrong and turning it to right.
“I don’t like thinking about what happened to Hope either. And yes, I know you’ve got more reason to be upset than me, but we both played our part. We both did a lot of terrible things when we were listening to Sebastian. Hope was the worst. But we’re out of that now. We’re here. God can turn it to good, Pitch.”
He nodded. He’d been hearing that message from Anna and Mr. Moses ever since he came here.
“Earlier today, Connor tried to tell me asking forgiveness in person would help. He doesn’t know I can’t. The one I need forgiveness from isn’t around anymore to forgive me.”
Kila reached over and took his hand. “She may be gone, but he’s still alive, Pitch. Maybe he can forgive you. That would be something, wouldn’t it? Better than nothing?”
Pitch shrugged and didn’t reply.
***
“So tell me about this Prophecy.”
Terri sat down uninvited at the conference table. Moses gave no sign that it bothered him. He eased into a chair across from her and smiled.
Outside the windows, summer in Las Vegas flexed its muscles. Potent sun made it too bright to look directly out. Terri marveled at the air conditioning that kept the huge room cool despite its wall of floor to ceiling windows.
She had changed back into her work clothes: white blouse, navy blazer, and slacks. They were more than a day old now. In the elegant environment, she felt a little grungy wearing the same clothes she had worn yesterday.
“Connor told you about the Prophecy, then? How much did he tell you?”
“Not much. Just that I should talk to you about it. I want to know. It’s a bit weird and creepy that you know things about me that I don’t.”
The older man’s smile pulled at her. An instinct to trust him rose up in her, but Terri’s training fought back. Trusting this man broke rules and risked lives. Her job was to bring people like Ethan Moses in for testing. So far this morning, she’d penetrated deeper into an organization of people with abnormal abilities than anyone in the AAA ever had before. It was the wrong organization, but still, she expected high praise from Director Flake when she got back.
Moses said, “I don’t really know all that much. I saw a vision. This city burning. A huge fireball, like a nuclear bomb. And a voice.”
Moses paused, and then said, “Millions die in fire unless you find Terri Jackson.”
Terri sat as if frozen. Moses’s description hit far too close to home. An explosion like a nuclear bomb. Millions dying in fire. It all sounded too much like the very assignment that brought her out of Area 51 and into Las Vegas. What had once been theoretical grew more real with every new thing she learned.
He seemed to be waiting for some answer from her. Terri cleared her throat, finding it too dry to talk. A pitcher of water remained from breakfast, and she availed herself.
“What do you think it means?” she finally managed.
“I don’t know. Destruction for this city is the obvious answer. When God speaks, you never want to assume. But it sure seems like he’s warning us of a terrible calamity.”
The water glass trembled in her hands. “Mr. Moses… Ethan, was it?”
He nodded.
“I have something to tell you. A couple somethings. And I’m afraid that the first one is a conversation stopper, but you have to let me go on to the end.”
He gave her a smile. Terri could tell it was meant to be reassuring, but she felt no such thing.
“I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”
“No one is, when they first meet new people. I forgive you.”
“Maybe you’d better hear the whole thing, before you go throwing around forgiveness so easily. You might change your mind.”
“I won’t. Forgiving is what we do. But go on.”
She sucked in her breath, and then swallowed. She swallowed again. Her voice didn’t want to work. When the words finally came out, they were no more than a whisper.
“I work for the AAA.”
Mr. Moses blinked and stared at her. “Excuse me?”
“The AAA. The government agency that investigates people with abnormal abilities. I work for them. People with powers aren’t a new concept for me. Connor, and Pitch, and Kila — I know all those names. I read their files when I took the job. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
She waited, halfway into a flinch before he even said anything, afraid of what the words might be.
“Well, knowing that, it makes more sense for there to be a prophecy about you being the key to saving lives. But you told me I wasn’t to let the first thing end the conversation.”
“Right.” She drew a deep breath, and found her voice again. “Right. Well, the thing is… The reason I came to Las Vegas — the reason I was in that abandoned hotel parking lot for Connor to find me — is that satellites picked up radiation signatures there. Radioactive material. Here in Las Vegas. And by radioactive material, I mean the plutonium that makes up the core of a nuclear bomb.”
Mr. Moses stared at her. “I see. You’re hunting a nuclear bomb while we’re chasing a prophecy of millions dying by fire. All of a sudden things look alarming, don’t they?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Now that you told me about your prophecy, I can’t sit here in your fancy tower just waiting for something to happen. I have to be out there finding the bomb.”
Chapter 9
“The problem is we have no way to estimate the yield that might be produced if someone has an abnormal ability that causes nuclear explosions.”
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Jason Penn stood at the front of a theater, with some of the AAA’s top agents filling the seats, leaning forward so as not to miss anything. The collection of dark suits and white shirts looked like a mannequin factory serving Brooks Brothers. Penn, like the agents he was briefing, wore his hair cut short. Dark sunglasses nestled away in the breast pocket of his navy blue blazer. The training materials all said that a suit tended to create authority for the agent in social settings, but the reason was immaterial. Federal agents wore suits or sports coats, and his audience was full of them.
The Abnormal Abilities Agency’s Operations Center on the air base at Area 51 went on high alert an hour ago, when Director Maven Flake had discovered that not only had Special Agent Jackson failed to check in, but she couldn’t be reached on her phone, and GPS said that the phone hadn’t moved since morning. Director Flake leaped to the worst-case conclusion: their agent was either dead or kidnapped and separated from her phone.
Whichever, the freak kids with abnormal abilities who called themselves the Legion were up to something. Whatever they planned, it appeared to involve someone’s abnormal ability setting off a nuclear explosion. That merited the attention of every single officer of the AAA.
Penn made eye contact with a few of the agents, ensuring they paid attention. His official title was “Deputy Director for Operations,” Maven was the director, and there were three other Deputy Directors. When Penn made the switch from the FBI to the AAA, it gave him a boost in rank from Supervisory Special Agent in Charge. Now, standing in front of an audience of lower ranks who needed every bit of information he could give them, the decision pushed his lips into a smile. He’d made the right choice.
“‘We don’t know’ isn’t going to cut it, Jason.”
He sighed. The problem with being the Deputy Director was the director. Maven Flake didn’t speak to him in a way that would lead other agents to respect him. He wasn’t sure she respected him herself. An audible sigh escaped his lips.
“Of course, Director. We’ve prepared estimates from 10 kilotons to 1 megaton for the yield of the explosion, if it happens.”
The explosive power of nuclear weapons was measured in TNT equivalent. In other words, when the bomb went off, the explosion was equal to some number of tons of TNT. For example, a nuclear weapon with a yield of one kiloton was equal to a thousand tons of TNT. The official Homeland Security estimates of a terrorist bomb were somewhere between one and ten kilotons, or the equivalent of 1,000 to 10,000 tons of dynamite.
Penn went over some of the math in his head to calm him down and ease the sting of Maven’s public rebuke.
“The Hiroshima bomb produced a yield of 16 kilotons,” he began. “It destroyed buildings out to a radius of about a mile and well over 50,000 people were killed immediately by the blast. If a device of equivalent yield were to explode in the middle of the Las Vegas strip, though, the casualty count would be much higher. The casinos are orders of magnitude taller than buildings in mid twentieth century Japan. Tourists are packed thirty stories high for the entire four-ish square miles such a device would level.”
He saw the agents in the front row wincing and turning away. He knew how they felt. Preparing for this briefing forced him to contemplate death on an unprecedented scale.
“Those are just the immediate deaths,” he continued. “In the long term, survivors of a nuclear explosion — whatever the cause — set off in Las Vegas can expect 10 percent higher cancer rates, with some cases not even appearing for as many as 50 years after the event.
“Worse still is the fallout. A nuclear detonation sucks surface debris up into the atmosphere. The explosion makes it radioactive, and it falls back to Earth in the direction dictated by the prevailing winds. Although it’s outside the expected lethal fallout radius in standard models, we need to be aware of the fact that Hoover Dam and Lake Meade are downwind from Vegas. They supply water to California and this entire region. Radioactive contamination there would be catastrophic.”
Penn could tell from Maven’s ashen face that she no longer felt like he wasn’t delivering anything. He took a small bit of satisfaction in that.
“Good briefing, DDO,” she stammered, using the bureaucratic shorthand for Deputy Director for Operations. “Is that… Is that as bad as it gets?”
His response came back with no delay at all.
“Not even close, Director Flake. That’s just the low end of the possible yield. If the Legion and their powers can produce a military grade explosion, on the order of a megaton or worse…”
Finally, he did pause for a second before saying, “Well, the numbers are catastrophic. Las Vegas would cease to exist.”
***
Terri Jackson paced the conference room like a tiger in a cage. She’d been at it since Mr. Moses told her the prophecy.
“My supervisors at the AAA think it’s not a standard nuclear bomb,” she said. “They think it’s someone with abnormal abilities, whose power might create nuclear explosions.”
“It’s hard to see how that could work. First of all, I don’t think God would create something like that. That much destructive power is evil. I also can’t see how a person could ever use a gift like that. Try it once, and that’s the end of you and everyone around you.”
“I don’t know. Maybe the power sets the explosion off later, or at a distance. I don’t know if you’re right about God being involved anyway. All I know is that I came here because we thought people with abnormal abilities were at the heart of the threat, and Connor and company popped into my life at the exact moment I was looking for people like that.”
Moses replied, “If there really is someone with a gift like that, they’re not here. All of us among the Sons of Thunder know each other’s gifts. There’s no one here like that. And even if there were, there’s no one here who would use it.”
“Are you sure? The AAA has files on half of your people. Kila Dent is no princess for sure, and Pitch is a flat out killer.”
“God changes lives, Ms. Jackson. Whatever Pitch was, he is not anymore. I would bet my life on that. I already have just by living with him.”
She sighed. He was right. She’d talked to Pitch, and the unstable lunatic described in the government file bore no relation to the real-world young man. But if Mr. Moses was right, and the person with a nuclear ability wasn’t here, then she was wasting her time.
“I need to call in to the operations center,” she said. “This is too big a decision. I’ve only been in the Agency for a year. People with more rank should be making this call.”
As she said it, she reached to her side for her purse. When her hand passed through empty air, she remembered being mugged that morning. A second later…
“My phone!”
Moses raised his eyebrows, waiting for more information.
“I… I must have dropped it. I reached into my purse to give him my cash and…”
She remembered feeling her hand catch on it inside the purse, struggling to get past the phone, and then it was all a blank in the stress of someone pointing a gun at her.
“Ethan, I have to go. I have to go get that phone.”
“That’s not a problem at all, Ms. Jackson. I’m sure Ms. Wales will be happy to get you back to the parking lot. Just to be safe, I think Mr. Merritt should go along with you. Perhaps I’ll come as well.”
“No, you don’t understand. I’ve been out of communication for hours. That parking lot is going to be crawling with AAA Agents. They’ll arrest you all immediately. Worse, if I show up with a bunch of fre… Excuse me. Institutional culture. If I show up with a bunch of people with abnormal abilities, I’m going to be under suspicion myself. I’ll probably lose my job. Then neither of us will be able to do anything about the bomb that’s about to blow this city away.”
“But Ms. Jackson, you remember this morning. The Legion is out there. Whatever’s going on, they’re involved, too. You’re not safe.”
“I’m heading into a place where, if the AA
A isn’t there in force already, they soon will be. We have experience dealing with people with powers. Trust me, you coming with me is a terrible idea. We’d both probably wind up in a cell.
“I can’t have you, Connor, and Anna with me. I can’t have anyone with me. I need to go alone.”
***
Lincoln, Spooky, and Sebastian walked through the abandoned parking garage. Once upon a time, the structure had seen a constant stream of traffic in and out, gamblers eager to part with their cash at the Star of Fortune casino. Since the Star collapsed into bankruptcy and ruin, this building, like the rest of the grounds, sat vacant and dusty under the desert sun.
“Why wouldn’t you let me fight Connor, Sebastian?” Linc asked. “Why’d you give it to Drake instead? He’s not even loyal. You know I am.”
“Are you, Linc? Connor was your best friend.”
The boy with the slicked back hair snapped his head angrily to the side to glare at his leader. “That’s how you ought to know I’m loyal. I thought you did know. I gave up my friend for this, Sebastian. Connor and I had been together for years. I’m loyal to the Legion. I thought I proved that.”
“You have,” Spooky said, laying a soothing hand on his shoulder. But Lincoln ignored it, staring at Sebastian.
“But you’re still acting like he’s what you care about. Connor’s a side show here. We’re after this Terri Jackson person; Spooky said someone will have the chance for revenge against Pitch because of her. And I want revenge against Pitch. I can’t afford to have you and Connor go nuclear on each other. Not when we haven’t found Pitch yet. You might kill Connor before he has a chance to show me where Pitch is.”
“Nuclear is more like Drake than me. His fire’s getting worse and worse. He gets angrier and angrier, and less and less loyal. You should be more worried about him than me.”
After speaking those words, Linc turned aside and walked forward without saying anything more. He kicked a crumpled up empty cigarette package littering the ground.
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