With all the energy that remained in her, Janis withdrew the needle from Creed’s throat and yanked him from Pestilence’s grasp. Throwing her left arm out behind her, she flung Creed across the room.
“Now!” she shouted.
Pestilence was recovering when Tyler’s current slammed into him. He shook violently, metal parts lighting up white. A scream gargled up his throat. Along the metal plates, his skin blistered and bubbled. Something in the electronics of his head popped. Janis waited for him to topple.
The current thinned and crackled out. Pestilence was smoking but still standing.
“I hit him with everything,” Tyler panted. “Must have some sort of built-in grounding element.”
Pestilence’s lips broke into a smile as he rotated his right forearm. Janis concentrated, but she had nothing. Her powers were spent. The black bore of the atomizer waxed into view.
“Run!” she screamed to Tyler.
She stumbled backward, one hand to her mouth. The fog that swarmed around her had a sharply bitter taste. Taste? In a flash, she remembered her kindergarten teacher rubbing a broken clove of garlic over the bare soles of her and her classmates’ feet as an experiment. A minute later, a chorus of “eews” had erupted as the pungent taste found their mouths.
My skin, she thought in horror. I’m absorbing whatever he’s spraying through my skin.
Her body stiffened, and she crashed onto her back like a fallen statue. Her chest wouldn’t expand. Her sternum ached.
Some sort of paralytic…
The ache in her chest deepened until it felt as if she was being gored. She couldn’t raise her tingling arm. Couldn’t even wince her face. Her eyes stared into the drifting fog.
Somewhere, Pestilence began to laugh a wet, carnivorous laugh.
Janis’s heart gave a final, desperate thud.
And stopped.
Scott hit the sealed doors of the engineering facility with a blast and pushed his way inside. In the still air, smoke curled from his tarpaper suit. He spotted Agent Steel and her men ahead and sprinted toward them.
“Where are the others?” he called, the oxygen mask distorting his voice. “Where’s Janis?”
His soles yelped against the floor as he pulled up in front of them.
“An Artificial has Creed hostage,” Agent Steel explained. “Janis and Tyler are inside. They’ll handle it.”
“I’m going in,” he said.
“No, it’s too dangerous.”
He wriggled from the hands that reached over to restrain him and threw open the closed door. He nearly tripped over Creed, who lay in a grumbling sprawl. Scott traced what must have been his trajectory, past toppled desks and scattered computers, until he came to Tyler retreating from a bank of white fog.
Scott was about to ask where Janis was when, inside the fog, he caught a blot of red-orange hair.
Oh, Jesus.
“No!” Tyler said, cutting him off. “It’s some kind of poison.”
Beyond Janis, harsh laughter sounded. Scott used it as a homing beacon. Eat laser, you mother…
The recoil from the blast snapped his head back. Scott steadied himself, poised to fire again. Through the dispersing fog, the Artificial took shape. He was slumped against the shattered computer screen, his ocular implant dimming to black. Blood ran where a thick shard of glass skewered his neck.
Scott’s gaze dropped to Janis, who lay on her back.
“Send a charge through the air,” he ordered Tyler as he ran toward her, releasing his helmet. “That should kill the active agent.”
He knew she was gone before he took her rigid hand in his, held his ear to her porcelain lips. No breath. He pressed his fingers to the cool skin of her neck. No pulse. From a faint distance, he heard Agent Steel and her men running toward them.
He stared at Janis’s open eyes.
I can’t lose it, he told himself. I have to lead.
He removed his oxygen mask. Then, pinching Janis’s nostrils shut, he enclosed her mouth with his and breathed.
Janis’s chest rose twice but collapsed again when he stopped. He fit the heel of a palm into the hollow of her sternum, clasped his fingers, and began compressing in short, solid thrusts.
He counted to fifteen and rechecked her breath and pulse.
Still nothing.
He was beginning the cycle again when Tyler spoke. “I can try something,” he said. “If you’ll let me.” Scott realized Tyler was kneeling across from him, running the tip of his tongue over the spot where Scott had punched him.
Scott switched from breaths to compressions.
Agent Steel raised her visor. “Scott, we need to evacuate her right away.”
Scott stared into Janis’s vacant eyes, willing them to life. “We have to get her heart going first.”
“That’s not a request,” Steel said. “It’s an order.”
Scott’s gaze met Tyler’s. He loosened the collar of Janis’s suit and lifted it enough for Tyler to fit his hand inside. Scott watched the knuckles of Tyler’s hand inch down and come to a rest over her bare sternum.
When Tyler looked up, Scott nodded in encouragement.
Tyler licked his lips again and drew a breath.
“Clear,” he said.
35
Prince Khoggi’s compound
Director Kilmer raked his hands through his hair as he paced the perimeter of the make-shift conference room. He’d been receiving the updates in static bursts. One stabilization tower blown, then a second, third, fourth…
But that had been the extent of the damage, thank God. The battle for Al Karak was over now. The Soviets had lost.
Kilmer considered the cleanup and rebuilding. A major chore, no doubt. But he’d been told that with U.S. help, the oil processing facility would be back to full capacity within six months. And with the remaining OPEC countries pledging to make up the difference in the meantime, the markets would stabilize long before then. In other words, the United States had been spared.
Big time.
But that news only half relieved him. He stopped and stared around the empty room, where only hours earlier his team had been seated. The joints of his tensing jaw clicked. He’d learned about the eight members of Steel’s team, lost in the explosions. Now he awaited news of his Champions.
His watch beeped. And here it comes.
Kilmer powered on the monitor that linked him to the Champions’ jet. Seconds later, Agent Steel’s pale face filled the screen. Kilmer could see immediately that something was wrong. Her eyes, usually so hard and iced-over, looked bloodshot and worn.
“What’s our status,” Kilmer asked.
“Scott, Tyler, and Creed are fine,” she said. “Margaret suffered a concussion and is receiving treatment. Jesse’s still missing…”
“Missing?”
“Yes, sir. He disappeared when we reached the engineering complex.”
“Of his own volition?”
“We believe so. One of the engineers witnessed him duck through an escape portal that leads to a helipad. In a garage underneath the helipad, my men found evidence that he had engaged the Soviets—they were littered everywhere—but there was no sign of him. Members of the Saudi army, however, reported a chopper leaving the facility around the same time.”
“Whose chopper?”
“We don’t know that, sir. It didn’t appear on Saudi radar, either going or coming.”
Coldness crept over Kilmer’s face. They would conduct a thorough investigation, but he already had a suspect in mind.
Fuck.
He didn’t realize he’d stopped talking until Agent Steel spoke again.
“And we’re losing Janis.”
“Janis,” Kilmer echoed.
“Yes, sir. She was hit with a super-toxic strain of botulism. Tyler was able to restart her heart, but she’s in respiratory failure. We have her on mechanical ventilation. We’re en route to our base in Germany.”
“Okay, good.”
“She�
��s holding on, sir, but barely.”
“Time to arrival?”
“About thirty.”
“Will she last that long?”
“Our medics say fifty-fifty. But even if she does, sir…”
Director Kilmer nodded grimly. He had little doubt the botulism was the product of a Soviet laboratory, which meant the infection would resist antitoxic treatment. For the moment, the thought of Janis’s struggle for life eclipsed the horror of Jesse’s possible—no, probable—defection. He had looked that beautiful, fiery girl in the eyes once and promised to protect her.
And now…
“Stand by,” he told Steel. “I’ll see what I can do.”
When the monitor went black, Kilmer picked up a satellite phone and dialed from memory. He was breaking one of the program’s key fail-safes, a fail-safe he himself had developed. But while the protocol made sense on paper, these kids were flesh and blood. The closest he had to his own.
He listened to the phone hum and beep, its signal launching into space before beaming to the other side of the world, landing in an unassuming town in the western United States.
“Beta speaking,” a man’s voice answered.
“Champion,” Kilmer said back. “We have a situation.”
“Priority one?”
“No, four, but hear me out,” Kilmer said quickly. “One of ours is fighting for her life, and I understand you have a member who heals. I wouldn’t do this, but … look, she’s our most powerful.”
Kilmer listened into the silence that followed.
“You’re talking about a compartmental breach,” the man said.
“I know.”
“I would need presidential approval.”
“Dammit, there isn’t time.” Or am I afraid the request won’t be granted? “Look, I would have said the same thing if you’d been the one calling me. I get it. I understand. But do that for a second. Put yourself in my place. Imagine if it was one of yours who needed…”
“What’s the location?”
Kilmer exhaled. “Thank you.”
36
Four days later
Thursday, November 21
11:05 a.m.
The pair of black eyes staring down on Janis were embedded in a furry face with a blunt nose. Janis closed her own eyes, rolling them to clear a film of sleep, and squinted them back open. The face was still there, but the eyes had become marbles.
Janis reached over, vaguely aware a tube was running into her arm. She touched soft fur, then took the stuffed animal in her hands.
“It’s a camel,” someone said.
Janis craned her neck to find her sister standing beside her bed.
“A gift from Prince Khoggi,” Margaret explained. “It arrived this morning.”
“Khoggi?” Janis croaked.
“Remember how we thought he was involved in leaking the info about the Al Karak takeover. Well, it turns out his brother was behind it. Hameed co-owned an oil field with some Russian partners, those men in the restaurant. By leaking, they’d hoped to profit from the spike in prices. But Khoggi, who had a share in the enterprise, was against it. That’s what they were fighting about.” She shrugged. “Seems he wasn’t such a bad guy after all.”
Janis nodded her head, even though Margaret’s words felt like scarves of mist. She tucked the stuffed camel beside her hip and looked around. She was in a hospital room, clearly.
“Are we in Gainesville?” she asked.
“You ask that every time you wake up.” Margaret took a cup of water from a bedside table and held the straw to Janis’s lips. The cold water salved her raw throat. “We’re in Germany. We were airlifted from Riyadh four days ago. I suffered a knock to the head, remember?”
Janis saw an image of Margaret on the ground, Steel’s men around her, and she nodded.
“But you were in a lot worse shape than me.”
“I was?” Janis asked.
“One of their Artificials hit you with a toxin that sent you into cardiac arrest. Until two days ago, you were on full life support, but you pulled through, thank goodness. Yesterday, the doctors began weaning you from the ventilator. And today, voilà, just oxygen and IV fluids.” Margaret nudged Janis’s chin with her fist. “I told them you were a fighter.”
As Janis touched the nasal cannula blowing air into her nose, she struggled for her memories. This is a contest between mighty countries, she remembered someone declaring, between men. Not small girls. An Artificial took form in her mind: Pestilence. And he was holding…
“Creed?” she asked. “Is he all right?”
“As pissy as ever, but he’s fine, thanks to you.”
Janis remembered pulling the needle from his neck, throwing him across the room to safety. But now she saw a fog blasting from Pestilence’s atomizer. Run! she’d screamed to someone.
“What about Tyler?”
“Also A-okay. He’s the one who restarted your heart.”
“He did?” But she’d known that somehow, if not consciously, then viscerally. “And how’s…” She was afraid to ask. The last time they’d communicated, he was in that monitoring station, surrounded by a toxic storm. She wanted to reach for him now, but her brain felt like sludge. “How’s Scott?”
Smirking, Margaret stepped to one side. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
Scott was leaning against the doorframe to her room. He smiled shyly and raised a hand. A grin crept over Janis’s face, over her whole body, as she waved him in. Pushing up his glasses, Scott ambled forward.
“Think I’ll just leave you two for a little while,” Margaret whispered.
Scott leaned down and pressed his lips to Janis’s cheek. “Hey, there,” he whispered.
“Hey, yourself.”
“I’ve been by a few times, but I guess you don’t remember.” Janis shook her head. “No worries. The doctors said it would take a day or so for your sedation to wear off completely.”
“Did we talk?” she asked, beginning to remember snatches of him at her bedside.
“Yeah, but not always coherently. Conversation seemed to drift to someone you called ‘the healer.’”
“The healer?” But even as she asked, the words made strange sense. Janis could feel a presence inside her body, like a lingering afterglow, massaging her organs, her life force, instilling her with vital energy.
“Anyway,” Scott said. “You look tons better.”
“Except for a scratchy throat and some pressure in my chest, I actually feel okay. What about you? Were you hurt?”
Scott winced as he pushed his sleeves up to reveal bandaged arms. “A few not-so-serious chemical burns. Worst case, my hand-modeling career gets shelved for a couple months.” His face grew serious again as he draped his wrists over the bedrail. “That was one hell of a campaign, huh?”
She touched her fingers to his. “We did it, right? We took back the facility?”
“With a little help.” Scott’s brow wrinkled as he peered toward the door. He leaned close enough that Janis could smell the cool fragrance of his deodorant. “Listen, I haven’t told anyone this, but when I reached the monitoring station, Mr. Shine was already there.”
“Our Mr. Shine?”
“He’d taken out the person controlling the detonator. He was the reason the explosives in the engineering complex didn’t go off.”
“Thank God,” Janis said, remembering how she had braced for the detonation, hoping beyond hope her sphere would be strong enough to protect everyone. But her sphere had been missing someone, hadn’t it? She reached past Scott for the ice water and took another long drink.
“Yeah, but Mr. Shine spoke as though he was there with another team,” Scott said. “One like ours.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“When Kilmer debriefed us, he said there was another team at the facility. One affiliated with the Scale, the group that took over the nuclear launch facility back in August.”
“But why would they fight us then
and help us now?”
“Kilmer believes they only helped to the extent they could poach Jesse.”
Janis nodded slowly, realizing Jesse was the one who had been absent from her telekinetic sphere. “The Scale were the ones who called him with the intel on Al Karak,” she said, her powers of deduction and intuition starting to resonate again. “I bet they also met with him the night he went missing.”
“Exactly! And that Walkman with the orange headphones Jesse was carrying around? Turns out it was a two-way radio. I’d like to know what made him decide to walk out on us, though.”
Janis’s gaze fell to where Scott was massaging the lump above his wrist. Years before, Jesse had broken his arm there. But was that sorrow she heard now?
She scooted toward him. “Hey, don’t take it personally. I think it had more to do with his dad. They weren’t on the best terms, and threatening to pull Jesse from the Program was probably the final straw.”
“The irony is, Mr. Hoag finally withdrew his threat. Too little, too late, I guess.”
“Well, the mystery of Mr. Shine is solved, anyway,” she said. “He was a mercenary working for the Scale.”
“It looks that way.” Scott pushed out a sigh. “But there’s a part of me that still wants to believe he is looking out for us, like he claims. That he’s not dangerous. Because once I tell Director Kilmer, he’s going to open a can of Agent Steel on him.”
“At this point, I don’t think we have a choice.”
“And you still don’t feel anything?” he asked guardedly.
“I…” She took a moment to concentrate. “I have conflicting impressions.”
“What do you mean?”
Janis looked for a way to explain it. “Are you familiar with the yin-yang symbol? It’s a circle, equal parts black and white. The parts could be in harmony or struggle, maybe both—it’s hard to tell. Anyway, my early impression was that he was the equivalent of the white part of the symbol, the element that does good. Like when he saved us from that rattler.”
XGeneration (Book 4): Pressure Drop Page 25