I knew, though, when I stepped out of the car, that it wasn’t that. The cadence was too high; it was cycling far too fast to be anything of that sort. It was something else, something that spun at a much faster rate than tires, something that was disturbing the air around it rather than beating against unrelenting asphalt. A helicopter overflew us, one of the old Hueys like the ones from Vietnam war movies, and it settled into a slow descent only a hundred yards in front of us.
The highway we had been on had two lanes, with woods running along either side past the small ditches that were placed below the sides of the road to catch runoff. There were buildings a mile behind us, a small town built on the highway, and there were a few mailboxes spaced out on the shoulder. One was only fifty feet from where I stood. “Mailboxes mean houses,” I said under my breath.
“They are no safe haven,” Andromeda said, slipping out of the car behind me to take up position at my side.
“We need to get these guys out of here,” I told her as I watched the helicopter continue its descent; the only thing slowing it was the power lines that ran along either side of the road. “Any house will do for now; at least it’s cover.”
Scott came around the crumpled side of the car, Reed on his back in a fireman’s carry. He passed the side where black paint was so streaked with gray scratches that the steel peeked out from underneath. It looked like it had been keyed by the most pissed-off ex-girlfriend ever. “They’ve got RPGs and no reluctance to use them; I expect they’ll blow the roof off a house in short order.”
I looked at him for only a second as I ripped Kurt’s door off. “Are you sure you should be moving him like this?”
Scott tried to shrug, a vain effort given Reed was draped over his shoulders. “Move them or leave them for the guys with guns and rockets.”
“They will not show mercy,” Andromeda said. “They have none in them.” Her brown eyes were distant, and I followed them along a line to the helicopter, which had landed and was starting to deploy men in black, at least six of them, their dark outfits making them look like ninjas, covered from head to toe as they were. Cars were backing up behind the helicopter, a small traffic jam forming thanks to their deployment.
“Sienna’s right. We go for cover and worry about how flimsy it is afterward,” Zack said, startling me as he came around the front of the car, speaking to me through the flames on the engine. The air was filling with acrid smoke, causing me to gag from the smell of it. He chucked his thumb at the military-style team that had begun to move toward us. “We’re not going to get help from the Directorate for a while, so we need to move.” He pulled his pistol and extended it in the direction of our attackers, who were closing. “No time for debate.”
“What about Jackson and Hodgkins?” Scott asked, referring to the agents that had been riding with us until we had gotten to Wausau, where we had dropped them off to rent a car.
“Probably an hour behind us,” Zack said. “Ariadne gave us orders to floor it to get home; they were supposed to obey the speed limits.”
“Kurt,” I said, changing the subject. “He’s hurt bad, but I can free him if you give me a few minutes.”
“No time,” Zack said, and gave me a gentle push. “We go now without him or we all die.”
“Did you call them?” Scott asked, already beginning to run toward the driveway, Reed across his shoulders. “Did you warn the Directorate?”
“I dialed their emergency number,” Zack said as we began a sprint toward the driveway. Behind us, I saw the black-clad men, goggles over their eyes. They moved quickly, for humans, but not so fast that I couldn’t outrun them.
“You think they’ll send M-Squad?” Every step Scott took stirred up dust and dirt as we left the pavement and the highway behind, the trees around us offering a sort of tunnel, lining both sides of the driveway. It felt like a perspective trick, elongating in front of me, stretching out into infinity, as though it would take forever to run it. We had left the fire behind us at the car, but it felt like it was still with us, the stinging smell, the heavy smokiness hanging in the air around me as I ran.
“Doubt it,” Zack said. “I think they’re still in Kansas. But maybe some agents.” He cursed as he hit a low hanging branch at the edge of the driveway. “Hopefully heavily armed!” He said the last words with emphasis, and when Scott shot him a look, he shrugged. “The line is still open; they can hear us at HQ.”
“Scott,” I said, and he slowed to look at me. “Zack’s not going to be able to keep up with us.” I felt my resolve harden. “We need to buy him some time.”
“How?” Scott shot back at me. “You want to try and stop some bullets with your face? Or did you forget you’re unarmed?”
“Yes,” I said, “I forgot that I’m unarmed. Can you try and stop them with your powers?”
“A torrent of water isn’t going to slow down a bullet. The only way I could slow them down is by surrendering and making them stop to fill me full of holes.”
“I like it,” Zack said. “It’s got just the air of desperation we’re looking for in a plan right now.”
The trees thinned ahead as we reached the end of the infinite driveway. The sun brightened overhead as we exploded from under the trees onto an open lawn. The green carpet of grass lay before us, leading to a house set off the driveway. Brown wood siding, a garage tucked neatly under the second floor, it was a rectangular box of a creation. I looked back to see the men in black entering the driveway. Their weapons were raised but they had yet to fire.
I ran, ran like hell, like I would have if Wolfe were nipping at my heels. The only thing holding me back from going all-out was the knowledge that I’d be leaving Zack behind to die, or worse, be scooped up by these Omega bastards and have who-knows-what happen to him. I saw blood staining the leg of his jeans, and it made me pause, slowing my run.
“Into the house?” Scott called back at me.
“Better ideas?” I asked, passing him as I ran up the three short wooden steps to the brown front door. “No? Breaking and entering it is, then.”
“Wait!” I heard Zack call as I kicked the door down open. He joined me on the front steps and I heard a little hiss beyond the panting from his run. “We need to be able to shut it,” he said.
The first of the shots whistled around me as I stepped to the side of the doorframe to let Scott pass. At least three bullets lodged themselves in the siding above my head, and another broke the glass peephole window of the door. “It’s still on the hinges. Get inside.”
I dodged in after Zack, slamming the door and leaning my back against it. Zack had dropped to one knee and was fiddling with the leg of his pants as I yanked open the door of the coat closet to the left of the entry. I grabbed a leather coat from inside and threw it over my uncovered shoulders, my tank top not exactly offering a lot of protection. For others. From my skin.
“They’ll surround the house,” Zack said, cringing, from the floor. He had lifted his pants leg and I saw blood, lots of it, more than just a superficial cut. I dropped to my knees next to him and his eyes found mine. “You need to get out of here before they do. You guys can get away if you run.”
“And leave you behind?” I said, forcing a smile. “I’m pretty sure I just got docked points in a training exercise a few days ago for not working with my team and leaving them behind.”
He frowned, and the soft light of the open curtains revealed more pain in his eyes, the skin wrinkled around them. I was reminded, again, of how handsome he was. Even when he ought to look like hell, he didn’t – he just looked good. “You left Kurt behind,” he said, but the words had no real sting to them.
“You told me we had no choice.” I heard someone slam into the door behind me; muffled shouts came from outside.
“You didn’t argue.”
I blinked away a little excess lubrication of my eyelids. “You’re not Kurt.”
“I can’t keep up, Sienna,” he said, and he let his hand brush my cheek. “They’re gonn
a surround the house and come in, and we’ve got one gun to stop them with. You’re all metas.” He pointed to Andromeda, then Scott, who was just beyond the living room, standing on the white linoleum in the kitchen. “Our pursuers are human. You can outrun them, easy.”
“Probably not their helicopter, though,” Scott said, looking around. “Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do fast.”
“We run,” I said, not breaking my eyes off Zack.
“Attagirl,” he said with quiet resignation. “Buy time for the Directorate to get here. Do what you have to do.”
I felt the emotion rise. “I will.” I did it quick, so he wouldn’t see it – I raised my hand and clubbed him in the side of the head. Not too hard, but enough that his eyes rolled back. “Sorry,” I said as I lifted him onto my shoulders, careful not to touch his skin against mine. “No time for an argument.” I turned to Scott. “We go out the back and we run. If they want to come after us with a helicopter, we’ll find a big rock and take it out of the damned sky.”
“Sounds oddly familiar,” Scott said with an ironic smile, leading me out of the entry to the living room and into a kitchen in the back of the house. Andromeda followed us; if she had an opinion, she didn’t voice it, but she seemed to be taking everything in. The kitchen was white; linoleum, cabinets, countertops – the whole room felt bright, aided by a floor-to-ceiling sliding glass door that had the shades pulled back from it, the sun illuminating the room.
Sudden motion drew my eyes as Scott adjusted Reed on his shoulders and then lashed out with a kick to the kitchen table, sending it flying through the sliding glass door, breaking it to pieces as the table launched out and flattened two guys in black with submachine guns who had been easing up to it.
I heard the staccato sounds of gunfire pour into the windows on the sides and front of the house and I ran for the sliding glass door, only steps behind Scott. I scooped up one of the submachine guns from one of our fallen attackers, taking a second to stomp his head as I passed. I noticed Scott do the same and we both opened up with bursts of gunfire on the corners of the house as we ran, firing less for effect and more to drive the bastards following us into cover where they wouldn’t be able to shoot us – hopefully.
The backyard of the house went several hundred feet to the treeline of the woods behind it. To me it was an open question whether we’d even make it to the woods without getting hit. I vaulted over the cedar railing of the deck, Zack heavy on my shoulders. I heard Andromeda behind me and saw Scott go over as I landed. I ran, feet pounding against the grass. Another burst of gunfire caused me to zag, but it didn’t slow me. I turned and fired an offhand three-shot burst that forced a guy behind the corner of the house as I peppered the wall next to him with lead.
I fired another for good measure as I hit the treeline, but this one went wide; I was firing a submachine gun at long range and with one hand; even though I was stronger by far than a human, I wasn’t a miracle worker, and the gun kicked quite a bit. I heard bullets pepper the trees over my head, and branches snapped. One hit me in the side of the face as I passed. I veered behind a tree and fired again until the magazine ran dry. I flung the gun as I came over a slight rise and zagged behind another tree, altering my path to give me better cover. A look back confirmed it: I couldn’t see the house anymore, the trees allowing me to screen myself from their sight and line of fire.
We ran for minutes, outpacing our pursuers. I could not hear anyone other than Scott, puffing as he ran alongside me, following the natural veer of the landscape. I saw him, his face scratched and slightly bloody from where low-hanging branches had hit him as he passed. Andromeda made not a sound behind us, and I had to look back to make sure she was still there.
The woods were sparse, covered by a layer of dead pine needles, the underbrush not too thick here as we ran down, heading into a natural valley. I saw water in the distance, I thought, though it was hard to tell through the trees and the underbrush.
“Let’s go east for a while,” Scott said. “Unless there are any objections?”
“None here,” I said. “Every direction is the same to me – except for the one we just came from.” I looked back to Andromeda, who had stopped about twenty feet behind us, and was holding still, her tourist t-shirt the oddest contrast to her locks of sandy brown. Her face was perfect peace, a contradiction to the way I had met her, screaming, furious. “Andromeda?”
She was staring into the distance, beyond us, and I had started to slow to wait for her. “It doesn’t matter,” she said softly, and even across the distance between us I understood her words.
“It matters,” Scott said, having stopped himself, rebalancing Reed on his shoulder. “We need to get to cover, and find a way to dodge them for a while—”
“Irrelevant,” she said. Her eyes were locked on me, and I could see something behind them, something she almost seemed to want to say, but couldn’t find the words for.
“Andromeda?” I asked, uncertain. I had stopped, and could hear Scott’s breathing behind me. The wind was warm, a little drift of heat running across my face. The breath ran through me, and I could feel Zack’s weight on my shoulders, anchoring me to the earth.
“We need to keep moving,” Scott said, and I saw him looking around, as though our black-clad pursuers would descend at any moment.
“There is no escape. They have been waiting for this.” She seemed so certain, I didn’t feel it in me to argue, so I just listened to her. It felt as though all motion had stopped around us, like the woods had frozen, and the sounds of the crickets and birds had ceased, leaving a wall of silence around where we stood in the shade of the forest.
“No time for a defeatist attitude,” Scott said. “Let’s keep moving.”
A gunshot rang out, louder than the submachine guns we had been firing, clear and punctuating. Scott blanched and so did I. I saw Andromeda look down as she fell to her knees. A crimson stain spread outward from the center of her chest, a steady dribble of red running down the front of her white t-shirt. She hit her knees, then fell sideways.
“No,” I gasped, and ran to her, felt the rough ground beneath my knees as I landed next to her, dropping Zack without thought or ceremony. “Andromeda,” I said, touching her cool skin. I felt a prickle of activity; she had been only one of two people I’d ever met that I could touch without harming, and as my hand landed on her arm, I didn’t feel the usual draw of her soul through me, the way I did with others.
It felt…normal? “Andromeda,” I said again, cupping her face between my palms.
She let out a breath and coughed, a racking spasm that brought blood to her lips, little drops of it dotting her cheeks and chin, as it came out in a fine mist with every breath and settled on her pale face. She grabbed my arm, pulling me closer, then locked her hands on my face, staring into my eyes. “Remember me, Sienna Nealon,” she said, gasping for breath. “Know this…there is a traitor among you, in your Directorate.”
“A…what?” Scott said. He was next to me now, watching Andromeda, his eyes wide, his sandy blond hair streaked with dirt and grime from the ground. “A traitor?”
Her eyes flickered open, and she nodded, then focused on me, her brown eyes fading. “Remember me,” she said, her eyes still locked on me. “Remember me when you are cast back into the darkness, and I will light your way – I will show you the way.” Her next breath brought up more blood, but she smiled through it. She looked up, past me, into the sky. “The sun…haven’t seen it…for…”
Her grip on my arm loosed, the light faded from her eyes as she went limp in my arms, the smile disappearing from her face as the muscles went slack.
Chapter 3
“No time to mourn,” Scott said, abrupt, a mask of control wavering on his face. “We need to go.”
“She’s dead,” I said, whispering. “She’s dead, and—”
“And we’re next,” Scott said, snapping his fingers in front of me. “You know this. You’re the toughest among us. Come on, Sie
nna, come back to me here. I need you for this. We have to get out of here.”
I ran my fingers over Andromeda’s neck, thrust them against the skin, pushed hard, hoping for a sign, a pulse, anything. I waited almost ten seconds, but there was nothing. “Okay,” I said, and hoisted Zack up on my shoulders. “We go west. We haul ass.” I felt my face harden, felt the emotion slip away, behind a wall somewhere, into a box perhaps, in the basement of my mind where I couldn’t hear it, where nothing but the slamming of a metal door remained to mark its passage. “And if we can find a way to do so, we kill these bastards – every one of them.”
“I don’t love our odds here,” Scott said. “You think the Directorate is on their way with some help?”
“Possibly,” I said, lifting Zack up and taking a step forward, then another, before breaking into a run. “But I wouldn’t like to bet my life on them.”
“I think you’re gonna have to bet your life no matter what. I suspect that helicopter has thermal imaging, and they’ll keep tracking us until we find a town or some other way to lose them. Any ideas?” he asked.
“Keep running.”
We ran for minutes more, time seeming to stretch as we went. I tried to focus on taking one breath, one step at a time, tried to put Andromeda out of my mind, along with the thoughts of what would happen next. After a while the scenery ahead changed; I could see the light shining down, the trees ending. “Veer left,” I said, and we did, following the treeline down. The chopper was behind us, I could hear it. We continued our run, over hills, through ravines. Every once in a while, it got quiet, and a few minutes later the chopper would fly overhead, sending the two of us scrambling for the nearby trees to hide behind until it passed.
It overflew us again, and ahead I saw daylight. “Woods coming to an end again,” Scott said. I could hear the alarm in his voice. I looked right, and knew he was thinking what I was: we had two directions now cut off to us, west and south. “Back the way we came,” he said, “either east or north.”
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