Mr. Shine aimed his eyes down.
Scott ventured a quick glance. What the…? He looked down a second time. Sure enough, a sprawl of legs led to a tailored military jacket, and, at last, to the staring face of a dead man. A red hat with the Soviet insignia sat beside his head.
“How…?” Scott started to say, the energy dispersing from his laser.
A line of blood showed where the man’s throat had been cut.
“Getting inside was the tricky part,” Mr. Shine said. Scott followed his gaze to the ceiling, where a panel sat ajar. “The rest was a cinch. Son of a gun never saw me coming.”
“But how’d you know the detonator was in here?”
Mr. Shine winced and rotated his blasted shoulder, as though trying to get the joint to pop back in place. “We’ve got someone a little like you, Scott. Good with electronics. He built a scanner that pinpointed this location.”
“So you’re part of another team?”
“I suppose you could say that.”
“But who contracted you for this job?”
“Why don’t we talk somewhere safer?” Mr. Shine spoke into the wrist of his suit, then raised his face back to Scott. “I’ve got a helicopter coming. It can pick us up from the roof of the building.”
“I … I can’t.” Scott said. “My teammates are in the engineering facility.”
“Don’t worry, we’ve got someone checking on them.”
“My girlfriend’s down there.”
For a moment, Mr. Shine’s jaw seemed to harden. But then he broke into pleasant laughter. “’Course she is. Well, here, I imagine you could use one of these, then.” He reached into a bag at his waist and pulled out an oxygen mask. “It’s my backup. It’ll get you there.” At the last second, Mr. Shine drew it back. “But I was never here, understood?”
“Yeah,” Scott said, “understood.”
He was still thinking of that hard look Mr. Shine had given him a moment earlier. He studied the mask and oxygen bladder as he took them in his hands. Is he trying to get me to take off my helmet? To disarm myself?
But when he looked back, Mr. Shine was already pulling himself up into the ceiling. Scott could just make out the soft whump of chopper blades beating the air in a steady rhythm.
“Hey,” Scott called. “When will I see you again?”
“Around the neighborhood, I imagine.”
Scott suddenly felt guilty for suspecting this man who’d been looking out for him all these years. He eyed the inert detonator, then the boots sticking out from behind the desk. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Shine…
“Thank you!” Scott called.
From beyond the ceiling tiles, he heard rich laughter. “Yeah, I believe I done earned that one,” Mr. Shine answered. “You’re welcome.”
Janis squinted her eyes open. There had been no explosion, no blast. The room around them remained intact. Something ran from her nose. When she inhaled, she tasted blood.
I don’t know if you can hear me, Scott said, but the detonator is toast.
When Janis tried to answer, the protective sphere dispersed in a great exhale. Janis clutched her helmet and fell to her knees. The others stumbled apart and peered around the room.
“Scott’s done his job,” she told them weakly. “We’re safe.”
“Well, hallelujah,” Creed said.
Agent Steel turned in a cautious circle. “Where’s Jesse?”
“Yeah,” Creed said, “where is the big man?”
“Big man?” one of the Saudi engineers asked. “I saw him go through the escape door.”
Though Janis felt like she could sleep for a year, she mustered enough energy to reach through the opening in the computer screen. In the below-ground corridor, she felt movement.
“Someone’s coming,” she said.
Clicks sounded as Agent Steel and her men raised guns to visors.
“I’m pretty sure it’s…” Jesse?
Janis hesitated. The person was dull and ponderous, but in her spent state, she couldn’t get a clean read on his signature. The effort to concentrate sent a spike through her head and more blood spilling from her nose. A shadow filled the portal to the escape route.
“You rootless son of a bitch,” Creed said, blurring toward who he thought was his friend.
Before Janis could stop him, a hand shot through the opening and seized the back of Creed’s neck. “What the…!” he cried. A thick hypodermic needle plunged into his throat.
Creed disappeared through the opening.
“Creed!” Tyler cried. Electricity burst from his hands in great rivers, illuminating the doorframe, blowing the giant computer in a storm of sparks.
“Hold fire,” Agent Steel called, moving forward with her men.
“Ne podkhodite!” a voice called from the corridor. Do not come any closer. The Russian voice was wet and brusque. “If you come closer, I will inject him with lethal agent.”
Janis translated for the others.
“Ask him what he wants,” Agent Steel said.
“Chto vy khotite?” Janis called.
He answered.
“He’s demanding you place your weapons on the floor and leave the room,” Janis said. “The Saudis are to leave, too.”
Agent Steel turned to her men. “Do as he says.” She led by example, setting her large carbine against a desk. “All right, file out. Everyone. Janis, I want you to monitor their movement. We won’t let—”
But Janis was already shaking her head. “He wants me and Tyler to remain.”
Agent Steel hesitated. Janis could feel her struggling for a plan. Not good.
“I will inject him!” the man called from beyond the door.
“Go,” Tyler told her.
Agent Steel nodded to her men, whose footsteps faded from the room. “No matter what he says,” Steel whispered near Janis and Tyler, “no matter what he threatens to do, don’t compromise yourselves. Do you understand?”
Creed was expendable, in other words.
“And if you get a clean shot,” she said, “take it.”
When Agent Steel left, Janis turned to Tyler. “Don’t worry, we’re going to get your brother out of this.”
His helmet nodded.
“They’re gone,” she shouted in Russian.
Beyond the opening, an artificial eye glowed white. “Remove your helmets,” he ordered in broken English.
The uncertainty in Tyler’s stance mirrored Janis’s own. A strangled cry from Creed made up their minds. They hurried to unfasten each other’s helmets and disengage the cords from the battery packs. Janis lifted off her helmet at the same time as Tyler. His eyes were intense with concern—for her, she realized. Remembering the blood, she pressed a forearm to her nose.
“Come toward me,” the man said. “You with red hair first.”
Tyler stepped in front of her and strode toward the door, energy crackling around his fists.
“The red-haired girl!” he bellowed.
Creed cried out again.
Janis caught up to Tyler and drew on his arm. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “I’m protected.”
It was a lie. She’d maxed out her abilities in anticipation of the explosion that never came. A small amount remained—a shallow reservoir—but she was saving it. She poked Tyler’s shoulder as she moved past him. “Just remember what Steel said about a clean shot.”
Jesse’s punch began in his feet, rumbled up his thick-set legs, and rocketed along his twisting torso and shoulder. He could feel the power gathering into his right fist—a fist that was closing in on Henry Tillman’s smug face.
But he missed.
At the last moment, Henry had leaned away. Jesse’s momentum swung him around, and he stumbled. A stomping kick landed between his shoulder blades, sending him rolling across the floor.
“That any way to greet a friend?” Henry asked.
Jesse shoved himself around and sprung toward Henry’s waist. A boot heel caught him square in the jaw. The gara
ge around Jesse wavered. He tottered and dropped to his fists, the taste of hot copper filling his mouth.
“What’s with you?” Henry asked. He pulled another cigar from inside his coat as he paced toward Jesse.
Jesse snorted and spit out a wad of blood. When something clattered across the floor, he realized he’d lost a tooth. He pushed the tip of his tongue into the fleshy space. “You tricked me.”
“Tricked you? How?”
“You’re working with them, aren’t you?”
“The Soviets?” Henry laughed around his cigar as he lit it. “Back in the fifties, I used them for punching practice, same as you. In fact, I wish you’d saved a few of ’em, for old time’s sake.”
“A lot can happen in thirty years.”
“Look,” Henry said, his voice turning hard, “we came here to help. In fact, if it weren’t for my teammates, yours would be scattered all over that room back there in little bits and pieces.”
“You’re lying.”
“When have I lied to you before, huh? Told you I could give you info on your real parents, and I did. Told you the Ruskies were gunning for Saudi oil, not Western Europe, and they were.”
“You’re tryin’ to get me to come over to your side.” Jesse spat out another rag of blood and wiped his lips. “Just like Kilmer warned us.”
“And what’s wrong with that? Happens in pro sports all the time.”
Jesse remained kneeling. Henry’s kick to his jaw was still cob-webbing his thoughts, his vision. He struggled for an answer. But what was wrong with that? The Champions Program had recruited him too, hadn’t they?
“You still don’t know if your father’s gonna relent,” Henry said. “Said so yourself. It’s why you called me back, wasn’t it? And even if he does, you think that program of yours is ever gonna release you from that prison they call a neighborhood. Naw, they’re gonna keep you right where they’ve got you—in that same shitty house with your old man. Gonna keep you there till your mutations rot you from the inside and you’re all used up.”
Jesse squinted up at him. “What’re you getting out of this?”
Henry’s good eye hardened. “My organization wants you, that’s all I know.” He stuck his large hand down. “Now, what d’ya say we turn the page on your old life and get started on the new?”
Jesse accepted his grasp and seized his elbow.
“I’ve got another ability you guys might not know about,” Jesse muttered as Henry pulled him up. “It’s called a bullshit detector.”
Planting his feet, Jesse heaved Henry around and released him. The man’s arms and legs flapped helplessly as he went airborne. He struck a cement pillar shoulder first, rocking the entire garage. Chunks of cement rained over the sprawled back of his trench coat.
“You’re not telling me everything,” Jesse said as he stalked forward.
Henry pressed himself to his feet and straightened his eye patch, sliding it over a pink, puckered socket. He brushed the shoulders of his coat and balled up his fists. “You just don’t learn, do you?”
He swung for Jesse’s jaw, but Jesse anticipated him. He had tamped down his anger, gone back to his training—his Champions training. If you’re ever up against a bigger, stronger foe, Gus had told him, don’t stand toe to toe. Use the speed we’ve been working on. Counter punch him. At the time, Jesse had scoffed. Bigger, stronger foe? Like that was ever gonna happen.
Henry’s punch whooshed over his ducked head like a wayward wrecking ball. Jesse’s answering punch crunched into Henry’s ribcage; the second, a short uppercut, shot between Henry’s forearms and snapped his chin back. Before Henry could regain his balance, Jesse drove his boot into his stomach.
“I made a commitment.”
Henry came at him with two more swooping haymakers, easy to slip. Jesse landed a three-punch combination in answer: left-right to the stomach and a short, powerful hook to the head. Henry staggered.
“I signed a contract,” Jesse said.
Henry grabbed for him, his face red with confusion and anger. This shouldn’t be happening, the look said. Jesse sidestepped and sledgehammered a fist against his upper back, sending him to the floor.
“A deal’s a deal.”
Henry tried to push himself up, but only managed to lurch onto his back. Cracked cement showed where his forehead had struck. A line of dark blood wet his hairline. When he looked up, a kind of fatality seemed to darken his blue-gray eye. He flinched when Jesse pointed a thick finger at him.
“I don’t want to see you again.”
Jesse was halfway to the corridor when he heard Henry shift in his giant trench coat. “Yeah, all right. Maybe I haven’t been entirely straight with you. Maybe I’m not telling you everything.”
Jesse didn’t slow. He was done with Henry Tillman. He had his teammates to check on.
“Truth is, you’re blood.”
The words turned Jesse’s legs to cement blocks. He craned his neck.
Henry rocked to his alligator-skin boots. “You wanted to know what was in it for me?” He sponged his forehead with a handkerchief he’d produced from one of his coat pockets. “Gettin’ back my son.”
34
“Do not try any of the funny business,” the shadow beyond the doorway warned, “or your friend will suffer the consequences. Come closer.”
“Do you have a name?” Janis asked. She needed time.
“Before, I was Pyotr Urakov,” he replied. “Now, I am called Chuma. Pestilence.”
“All right … Pestilence. What do you want with us?”
“To see what you look like.” His artificial eye glowed as his voice mocked. “You are beautiful young girl. But what is young girl doing here? This is a contest between mighty countries, between men. Not small girls.”
Anger smoldered in Janis’s gut. “Yeah, well, I didn’t get that memo.”
“And now you are in situation you cannot handle.”
“Really?” Janis shot back. “Last I checked, the oil facility was standing. The crude was still flowing. And your little firecrackers? They’re history, bud. We handled you just fine.”
You’re wasting energy with this school yard crap, she told herself. Focus.
Janis’s gaze shifted from Pestilence’s glowing eye. Creed was just beyond her sight, but she could hear his sputtering breaths. “Son … of a … bitch,” he managed, but without much force.
Ten feet from the doorway, Janis stopped. “Why don’t you come out here? Meet me halfway. Not afraid of a small girl, are you?” She held out her hands. “Look. No weapons.”
“You carry hidden weapons,” Pestilence stated.
Janis feigned confusion with her face. “What are you talking about?”
“We have heard of you. The great American superheroes.” Janis could picture his lips curling. “You think you are so great, but you are like pests. You fly around the face and make trouble, but you are nothing before the might of the Soviet Union. Our victory is written in history.”
“You flatter yourself,” Janis said.
“Flatter?”
“Delaesh sebe komplimenty. We’ve heard about you, too. Artificials. Or closer to the truth, mutilations.”
“You do not know what you are talking about. To be chosen is highest honor.” For the first time indignation scored Pestilence’s voice. “I gladly submitted to operation, and now I am mightier than ever. When the might of one man is increased, so is increased the might of Soviets everywhere. That is the difference between us. You fight for money. We fight for countrymen.”
“You mean you fight for the butchers who hacked you up.”
“They are not butchers!”
I’m getting to him, Janis thought. Just have to be careful that I don’t excite him into injecting Creed.
She affected boredom. “So you say.”
She could feel Tyler standing stiffly behind her. She scratched her back and pointed to her left.
“Soviet engineers are best in world! They have accomplished f
eats West can only dream about. We are envy of your stupid engineers. We are marvels.” Pestilence must have given Creed a violent shake because he cried out. Janis hoped that was all he had given him.
“If you’re so marvelous, why are you hiding?” she asked.
Behind her, Tyler edged over some more.
The white eye stared out at her. Suddenly, Pestilence stepped from the shadows and rose to his full height. Janis had to fight from recoiling. On the right side of his face, where his implanted eye was seated, a fused metal mask stared down on her. A complex of tubes and wires plunged in and out of his skull. Janis’s gaze fell to where his body was covered in a dense exoskeleton, crusted blood lining the frontiers between metal plating and skin.
Her eyes shifted to Creed, still hostage to Pestilence’s grip, to the hypodermic needle plunged inside his throat. It was only then that Janis saw the needle for what it was: the man’s first finger. Three more needles glistened in a line. She imagined Pyotr Urakov’s original digits amputated at their bases and tossed into a plastic bucket.
He must have mistaken her sharp intake of breath for awe. “Yes,” he said, his grotesque face swelling with pride, “now you see.”
“Now I see,” she echoed.
She eyed the black tubes that snaked from the giant tank on the man’s back to fluid that sloshed in the hypodermic needles. On the back of his right arm, more tubes terminated at what looked like an atomizing sprayer. She was gambling that his control over his appliances was mental.
Very carefully, Janis began easing glowing threads of space around Creed’s body and Pestilence’s hypodermic hand.
“Come closer,” Pestilence said. “Both of you.”
Get ready, Janis thought toward Tyler.
The air began to tingle with electricity.
Pestilence must have felt it, too. His eyes shifted past Janis. “What are you doing?” he shouted.
Grunting, Janis shot her arms out and with them, the reserve of energy she’d been gathering. From her right hand, a psionic blast landed against Pestilence’s forehead. It wasn’t strong, but she prayed it would be enough. She felt it vibrate through the metal plating that encased his skull and propagate, sonar-like, through his gray matter. For a split second, his mind flickered.
XGeneration (Book 4): Pressure Drop Page 24