Simon smiled again. Twice in five minutes, that had to be a world record. “Connor, son, how about a big static discharge in the shaft, once Earth Mover works his magic.”
Simon looked at me. “If you are good with that, I’d like Keisha to see about getting some metal, just a dusting, into the shaft, then get the pitons up there, in a spiral line,” he gestured, “like this.”
“Thanks, Simon,” Keisha said, sourly.
The air was thick with dirt and sweat. It was about to get thicker.
“Do it,” I told Odobe.
We all moved back down the tunnel.
He raised his arms over his head, pushed at the air. The earth above him rumbled, and exploded up and away.
“That should muddy up their day,” Connor said.
We all glared at him.
“What?” he asked, trying to act the innocent. Stupid joke.
I pushed him toward the shaft. “Get over there and hit the sides of the shaft with your static charge.”
He wiggled his fingers. “Zap!” he shouted.
I rolled my eyes. Still a kid.
There was a loud answering crackle, and blue light flashed overhead, then the smell of burnt earth. I stepped beside Keisha and the two of us shone our headlamps up the newly minted shaft.
She sliced up with her hands, six times. Each time a piton streaked up and into the shaft.
Simon uncoiled his nylon cable and pulled himself up to the first piton, threaded it, and then did it again.
“You next,” I told Lightning. For a second I thought she was going to backtalk again, but she kept her mouth shut and did as she was told.
Keisha next, then Connor.
I threw up another line. It took two tries before Simon could catch it, and then tied the other end around the handles for the EMP case.
“Take it up,” I yelled. I could just make out Simon and Keisha’s straining faces as they pulled the bomb up.
“Can you make it?” I asked Odobe. He didn’t look good at all. Usually we Empowered recovered fast, but Odobe hadn’t had time to catch his breath.
“I will do what I have to do.”
He hauled himself up to the first piton. Then the second.
Finally I had room to begin climbing. Just then I heard electricity and shouting from above. The shaft was lit by blue-white bolts.
I heard Keisha shout, the sound of weapons fire, and then silence. Crap. Were we headed into an ambush? I climbed faster until my head almost bumped against Odobe’s boots.
And then we were out into a darkened space, smelling of blood, gunpowder, and burnt flesh. My headlamp showed the rest of the team, spread out in what looked like an auditorium. Mounds of dirt covered a lectern and chairs. Three men in dark green uniforms lay dead beside desks, still holding pistols.
Simon scanned his data pad.
I ran up to him. “Which way to the target?”
“Straight ahead.” He held the pad in his left hand, his combo stunner-auto-pistol in the other.
“We gotta move,” I said.
I opened my duffle bag, pulled out the Amplifier. Strapped on the silver disk over my chest. I pulled on the gauntlets. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lightning eyeing me.
“Keisha and Connor, carry the device,” I ordered. They each grabbed a handle and lifted it. “Lightning, you take point with Simon.” She didn’t say anything, but stomped over to join Simon.
Odobe wobbled a bit. Damn, we needed him. He could help Keisha break through a wall by undermining it.
An alarm began shrieking nearby.
“Zap that if you can!” I yelled at Lightning.
“I can’t see it from here, idiot!”
I ignored that.
“Connor, hit the wall.” Electricity snapped and popped. The alarm didn’t stop.
Shit. “Let’s haul ass!” I shouted. I ran up next to Simon, yelled a question over the shrieking alarm. “Still straight ahead?”
He nodded. We jogged through a door into a hallway. A metal wall suddenly slammed down in front of us.
“Duck!” Keisha yelled behind me. Simon, Connor and I hit the deck. The metal wall in front of us disintegrated into chunks.
Guards lay prone in the hallway, rifles pointed at us. Keisha yanked her hands up, and a waist-high metal barrier between the guards and us rose up as the guards fired. Bullets clanged off the metal.
It was time for me to be useful.
I closed my eyes. I grew blackberry vines in an eye-blink, and sent the tangled mass writhing over Keisha’s barrier. The guards screamed as the vines engulfed them.
Connor sent electricity through the floor. The vines jerked, I heard their cry, but the guards’ screams were louder, and suddenly stopped.
We’d killed them.
I pushed the thought out of my mind. No time for remorse. I killed the vines, turning them brittle and accelerating their decay until they collapsed. Their screams sounded like the end of the world in my skull.
We rushed on. Keisha pulled another door off its hinges, and we entered a security room. Barricades had sprung up.
We ducked back, all except Lightning. She stood there, like she owned the fucking world, and threw lightning bolts screaming through the air. Flash and ozone stink. You could see the blood vessels in her pale skin when the lightning flashed.
“I could do even more if you gave me the Amplifier.”
I shook my head. “No. But don’t get ahead of us.” But she ignored me and ran through the room. We followed. At the far end was an airlock.
She went to the panel beside it.
“Get back!” Simon yelled at her. She ignored him and began pressing buttons.
Panels opened in the walls on either side of us and a green-black thing like a giant mantis strode through, arms and legs covered in huge spikes, head like a hammer, holding a cylinder shaped gun.
It fired a black snakelike cable that split into a six-headed hydra that grappled Lightning. She screamed, blood sprouting from her face and arms. The heads spewed acid all over her.
Her screams went higher.
Connor zapped the floor with a static charge. Two armored figures went down. Keisha sent spinning blades into the three on the far side, lopping off a head. More mantis things poured out of new openings in the wall.
The room suddenly tilted. There was a huge rumble, and we all staggered to the left. Odobe was kneeling, his palms on the ground. “Go on!” He yelled.
We ran toward the exit.
“Down!” Odobe’s voice was a hoarse shout.
We dropped.
The earth shook like the world was dying. The ceiling cracked, girders dropped.
A huge chasm opened up, and the mantis things fell into it. We reached the door. Keisha cut a huge gash in the metal. We staggered through. Keisha turned to seal it up.
The metal rippled, stopped.
“Come on Keisha,” I urged her.
She nodded. Raised her arms. The metal closed just as firing erupted inside. She staggered again. “Fuckers.”
I put my arm under her shoulder, braced her, with one arm, hauled the case behind me with the other.
We slowly walked away as she worked the metal.
Chapter 24
Keisha staggered forward, blood running down the side of her head. Her eyes were glassy. Behind us, the twisted, sealed metal of the airlock steamed.
“Stop,” I said. “We’ve made it.” We put down the carrying case, and Keisha sat hard on the ground, slumped. I wiped her face with a clean rag from the med kit, then slapped a bandage on her head. The iodine in the bandage had to sting but Keisha didn’t react, just stared dully at her hands.
We were under a green glass dome, must be the building we saw from the truck, a couple of years ago, or was it just a couple of hours? My time sense was shot.
There was a grove of tall, blue-black frond-like unplants in front of us, with a raised metal walkway running to a green-black wall which looked like it was made up of unliving armo
r. The green-black wall was topped by another green glass dome. What looked like inflated huts were scattered all over the space between us and the inner wall. Storage? Hell if I knew.
It had been too much to hope we could have found Ellis back there in that now broken maze of rooms. Lightning and Odobe dead, Simon and Connor missing.
“Wait here,” I told Keisha. “I’ll scout ahead.”
She closed her eyes, nodded slowly.
I had to get far enough away so that I could use the wrist comm without her hearing what I said.
All the civilians who worked in the five facilities. The people nearby. The deaths.
I thumbed on the wrist comm, brought it up to my mouth. Could I even reach Support from inside Emerald Green?
Three quick presses, hold for three seconds.
The wrist comm buzzed and comm flashed in green on the display.
“Brandt, here,” I said when the display showed link connected.
Alex’s voice, relieved sounding. “Mat! Where are you?”
“Inside Emerald Green.” I gave him the coordinates.
“Support has sent a Hero Council strike team to defend Emerald Green. Now this is important—“
I cut him off.
“That’s not what’s important. What’s important is that the rest of the Scourge infiltrated the Citadel, as United Nations personnel, bringing in five neutron bombs. My team’s breaking in to Emerald Green is meant to get the Hero Council to activate the Q-T network.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Did you catch that, Alex?” I repeated the message.
“Yes, I did,” he said, in a shocked tone. “How did you—“
I cut him off again. “Nefarious. It doesn’t matter now.” I closed my eyes. “You have to act immediately.”
“Affirmative. What about your situation?”
“My cell is inside the hothouse.”
“Can you pull back? We’re going to come in hot.”
Hot in the hothouse, if I wasn’t so beat up I’d laugh my guts out on the unintended pun.
Maybe I could buy Keisha and me a little time to drive a stake into the monster’s heart, whatever happened with the fortresses and the rest of the Scourge.
“We also have a neutron bomb, and the timer has been activated. Can’t deactivate it. Deadman switch.”
His voice was suddenly, desperately, urgent. “Get out.”
He cared more than I had realized. Damn it.
Maybe that would keep them off my back until we actually penetrated the inside of the hothouse.
“Just stop the Scourge from getting to the Q-T network.” I didn’t need to say any more. Alex would know the slaughter that would happen if the neutron bombs got sent through. It might be too late for Colorado Springs already. It was for Keisha and me.
“Goodbye, Alex. I wish I could have known you better. You are a fine guy.”
I clicked off the comm. Damn.
The Amplifiers’ straps were digging into my back. I shifted them. The frond things rustled and I backpedaled to Keisha.
The air had that acid stench.
The weird blue black ferns rustled louder, and then a giant walked out of the grove, standing twelve-feet tall. It had three legs, and three arms, glistening green-black like the armor. In the center of the thing was a clear capsule, big enough to hold a person. And a person was inside.
Not just any person.
Ellis. The bastard was here, in Emerald Green. The intel hadn’t lied. He knew what was going on. He ordered all this. He had to. But what had he done?
I could just make out his face, and he smiled a crazy smile at me.
I pushed my power at him. He was inside of a thing made of the artificial unlife. It felt newly born to my sense, to my power. My stomach twisted when I saw the green tendrils trailing from his skull. He had merged with the unlife. A desperate move when he realized Emerald Green was going to fall. He must not have been ready to link to the unlife. If any human ever could be ready.
I felt the static hiss of the plant giants in my head, and felt my special sense gliding off invisible glass like before.
I turned on the Amplifier. Suddenly I could feel the plant fibers stirring around Ellis as he began walking toward me.
“Fucker!” Keisha had gotten up, flung spinning steel at him.
Ellis raised a segmented armored limb, and spines extended from it, like three foot long, steel spikes. The blade clanged off the spikes.
Keisha tried again.
Same deal.
“It’s a waste,” I yelled.
“You will feed my dream,” Ellis said. “The world will become my dream.”
Maybe it was the suit-thing he was inside of, but he sounded completely off his nut, like gibbering crazyville. It had to be the suit. There was nothing of the smooth-talking tech guy. Just another nut-ball with power, like any number of bad Empowered I’d seen since I was little.
He laughed and strode toward us.
I bore down, tried to get my power to grapple at the living things inside the alien suit-thing. The sweet, soft hiss of grass filled me. There.
He chopped with an arm at us. Keisha jumped in front of me, and spikes hit her chest.
She fell against me and we both went down.
I poured my power into the grass strands and Ellis roared in crazed frustration, giant body shaking.
I couldn’t hold on. The grass was slipping behind the invisible glass in my mind. The unlife must be adapting. Adaptive armor.
Movement off to our left. A veiled female figure dressed like a character out of the Arabian Nights appeared on top of a storage building. She waved a sword, a curved sword.
Something stirred in my memory. I knew what that sword was called.
A scimitar. Ella had told me once. Princess Warrior used it. She somersaulted off the storage building and ran toward the thing. She sprinted past the thing’s front leg. She slashed with the scimitar, and the leg came off just below a bulbous joint. The giant fell.
Ellis howled his frustration. Was there anything human left of the bastard? There was anger. He staggered up, and the stump above the severed leg grew. I felt it grow.
I tried grappling at it. He wasn’t the only one angry. I pushed at him with my anger, but it wasn’t enough.
He whipped around and went after the masked woman. She dodged pincers that suddenly had grown from his arms, slashed at one, cutting it off at the base.
Time. Ellis wasn’t going to stop. She slashed again, but for every slash the severed limb regrew.
It didn’t matter now that we weren’t inside the Hothouse. This would have to be close enough.
I unlocked the neutron bomb’s case, flipped open the arming pad, and keyed in the code. The lights flashed. It wouldn’t have mattered.
The countdown clock was set to one hundred twenty seconds.
I hauled Keisha over to me, lifted her arm over my shoulder and started dragging her away from the neutron bomb, and toward the outer wall Keisha had fused with her power.
“Get out of here,” I yelled at the apparition of Princess Warrior. But she kept striking with her princess sword, a scimitar, just like the one Ella’s Princess Warrior wielded in her stories.
I pulled at the fibers inside the twisted demon unliving thing that Ellis controlled. He whipped around but Princess Warrior wouldn’t let him come after us.
Keisha and I were going to die in seconds, and so would that asshole Ellis, and the Princess Warrior straight out of Ella’s stories.
Ella’s Princess Warrior used to hide in a magic forest.
The Amplifier boosted my power. Every moment my power became far stronger than the moment before, but still I couldn’t bend Ellis’s giant plant creature to my will.
But I could control the grove.
I reached into the weird ferns and could see their hearts past the glass, the glass that no longer rose up in my mind. They were plants, alien plants, but plants, and my anger poured through me and in
to them.
Deep inside their cells I found the putty-like stuff that they came from. I could change it.
I made the plants grow up from the soil around Keisha and me. Grow up and over us, in three heartbeats. The bomb had only seconds before boom.
The plants blocked off our view of Princess Warrior battling Ellis.
Keisha was unconscious. I stroked her face. Even as I stroked her face, I told the ferns to turn to lead. It probably wouldn’t work.
But what did I have to lose? We were about to die.
I closed my eyes, still stroking Keisha’s face, and put steel into the lead-like substance, and then made it reflective. The Amplifier gave me this gift over my power. Now, as I was about to die, I could manipulate plants and make new things.
Now, I think I could kill Ellis’s giant, if only I had a little more time.
Even through the diamond hard, lead-like unliving thing I had created, I sensed Ellis battering against my little blister of a dome.
Then the world turned arc white and I was blinded, falling into brilliant white light.
Chapter 25
I coughed. It was pitch black. A burnt wiring stink filled my nostrils. I coughed again.
I reached out, and my hand brushed against fabric. Keisha’s jumpsuit. I ran my hand up until it brushed against her throat. I found her pulse.
I couldn’t feel anything with my special sense. Nothing at all. I got to my feet and hit my head. There was a crack, and light flooded through the shattered plant dome. It was brittle, like ancient wood.
I smashed through it, and blinked in the sunlight. The stink made me cough again. I pulled off the Amplifier. It was a mass of burnt wires and metal. My jumpsuit smoldered where the Amplifier had touched it.
The green glass dome was gone. The unliving ferns were gone. The green-black wall was gone, and inside, the huge podlike things were dissolving into dust and blowing away in the breeze.
The metal outer wall was gone as well, and the shattered maze of corridors had melted. I could see the hillside. No sign of Ellis or Princess Warrior. Or anyone else.
I pulled Keisha up. This ruin had to be radioactive now. We needed to move quickly. I hauled Keisha onto my shoulder and began staggering through the ruins.
Empowered: Traitor (The Empowered Series Book 2) Page 22