Fearless (Dominion Trilogy #2)

by Robin Parrish

  "Certainly," the cop replied. "But the Chief won't sign off on it. And with good reason. Wait until you feel the pull of this thing for yourself-then you'll understand. It's like this awful sickness that settles into your gut, this feeling that you're going to die if you don't stop moving forward."

  They were twenty meters from the edge of the riverbank when sirened cars burst onto the scene and blocked their path to the water. A dozen car doors opened and suited agents of some kind emerged. Multiple handguns were leveled on Grant and his friends.

  The policeman stepped forward between Grant and the newcomers. "What's all this?!" he cried, irate.

  "MI-5!" one of the officers near the front shouted, his gun hand steady and ready to fire. "Stand down, or we will use lethal force!"

  "What are you on about?" shouted the cop. "They're here to help!"

  "You're relieved," said the man in black, still aiming his gun at Grant's head. "MI-5 has assumed jurisdiction over this situation. Stand down immediately."

  "What's the meaning of this?" Grant said.

  At the simple movement of his mouth, the gunmen became twitchy, tightening their gun grips and shifting their body weight to better stances.

  "We have our orders, sir," called out the man up front. "You are denied access to the barrier by Her Majesty's government, and you are ordered to come with us at any cost!"

  Grant made a quick mental calculation.

  "Down, NOW!" he shouted. All eight members of his team immediately dropped to the ground as an ear-splitting crack like a thunderclap was heard and a visible wave of energy exploded from Grant, rippling outward in a perfect circle and demolishing everything in its path.

  Grant's team clung hard to the earth to avoid being tossed aside by the wave, but the MI-5 agents and their vehicles were not so lucky. The wave flung the cars up into the air and far out across the river as if they were shreds of paper blown by fierce wind. The policemen followed suit, some crashing into the cement fence that stood between the road and the river, others flying up high and soaring until they landed in the river itself.

  A handful of trees, street signs, and riverside benches had been swept away by the blast as well. Nothing stood for a one-hundredmeter radius around Grant, save for himself. Everything else had been flattened or blown away.

  Grant was careful not to release enough energy that it would touch the pedestrians, so the wave of energy he created dissipated before it ever reached them. It was a short-wave, but incredibly powerful blast.

  Only a handful of people had ever witnessed Grant's utilization of this secondary ability he'd discovered not long before his final showdown with his grandfather. No one who was here now had ever seen it before, including Grant's entire team, who still clung to the ground, and they joined in the hush that fell over the crowd at this terrifying display of raw power.

  "Come on, come on!" he shouted at them. "We have to go before more of them arrive!"

  The group split up and melted into the crowd. Grant had the hardest time of this, of course, though anyone who saw him made sure to give him a wide berth. The team reunited back at the van an hour later.

  "Well, any element of surprise or subterfuge we might have had on our side is long gone now," he remarked, revving the engine and driving south.

  "Ya think?" said Lisa.

  He glared at her from the rearview mirror.

  Alex, voice still trembling, managed to change the topic. "The sun is already getting low, so we'd be lucky to make it around the barrier before nightfall. Even if we did manage it, we've got no guarantee that it would be any easier getting inside from there. If we're going to do this, it's got to be somewhere around here. The cover of nightfall should help, as long as we can come up with a plan to get across the river that ... doesn't draw a lot of attention to us."

  The others swallowed this in silence.

  "We're ignoring an obvious question here," Fletcher said. "Why not go over the river?"

  "Look up," Lisa retorted. "Do you see any helicopters in the area? Their pilots turn around just like everybody else. Whatever the barrier is, it reaches high enough into the sky to prevent access that way too."

  "So," Alex wrapped her arms around her body. "What we need is to find a hole. Some gap in the barrier that whoever made it wouldn't have bothered to plug."

  "Assuming there is such a thing, then yeah," Grant affirmed. "What about the Underground?"

  "Closed down, according to the cop I talked to earlier," Lisa replied. "The tunnels have been checked; they're all affected by the barrier too."

  "Um, I have a thought." Julie timidly rose her hand, turning all the way around to take in the river. "The river represents the barrier. We can't fly above it. We can't go over it, via a bridge. And we can't cross the river in a boat. . ."

  "Right," Grant replied, eager for her to finish her line of thought.

  "What if we went through it?"

  "Twenty-seven oil fields in Saudi Arabia erupted in flames this morning, and experts have yet to determine a cause," said the talking head on the projected television screen that played at the front of the economy cabin, tuned to a twenty-four-hour news network.

  Federal Agent Ethan Cooke watched with rapt attention from his aisle seat while others around him slept. He took notes on a small pad.

  "The situation in the Persian Gulf is just the latest catastrophe in a series of unexplained disasters that have overwhelmed the entire world," the man on the screen said. "It comes hot on the heels of deadly mudslides that killed more than one hundred yesterday in southeastern Asia. Earlier in the week NASA announced that the orbits of ninety percent of all active, man-made satellites had begun to deteriorate. Those satellites-which number above two thousand-will reenter earth's atmosphere over the next month. The majority of them are expected to burn up upon reentry, though NASA expects at least ten percent of them to strike the surface, with only a fraction of those escaping the earth's oceans. Wall Street's telecommunications industries have taken an enormous hit from this news at a time when the global economy is already nearing worldwide collapse...."

  Ethan's body longed for sleep, knowing that this flight would be his one chance to get any decent rest before he arrived in London. But he couldn't tear his eyes from the screen. History was unfolding at a rapidly accelerated rate, and everyone knew it.

  He had seen it firsthand. Per Stevens's orders, he'd watched in Jerusalem. He'd done nothing but watch as Grant Borrows and his friend-or was she something more?-Alex worked tirelessly for hours, even days on end, saving lives, sacrificially giving of their own energy and health and going the extra mile each and every time. When Borrows unexpectedly and quickly pulled out of the city, Ethan bit the bullet and consulted Stevens on his next move.

  She had detained him by a few hours for a conference call during which he gave a full report on everything he'd seen "Guardian" do in Jerusalem. He did his best to keep his report unbiased, but it was hard to find anything negative to say about a man who gave so much of himself, yet had absolutely no obligation to even be there.

  He was highly trained and duty bound to bring Grant in. But he was absolutely convinced that whatever Grant Borrows was, he was not the bad guy.

  The problem now was how could he convince his superiors of this without becoming weak in their eyes?

  Even with their amateur disguises, Ethan was able to follow Borrows and his people to the airport and watch as they booked seats on a flight for London. As Director Stevens herself had pointed out, the fact that they never meant to end up in Jerusalem would help Grant's case considerably.

  The question now was what business did Borrows have in London? What could be enough to draw him there, along with so many of his people, and away from all of the pain and destruction in Jerusalem?

  Ethan had no idea.

  A police sketch of Grant's face popped up on the television screen, in a small box beside the talking newscaster. Ethan had never seen this drawing before.

  "We have just re
ceived word that the unidentified man known as `Guardian' has fled from Jerusalem under threat of military action from the Israeli government. Rumors have reached our newsroom that Guardian and his team have already been spotted today, now in Great Britain, where he had some kind of skirmish with local authorities. We cannot independently verify this information, but if true, we would speculate that his presence there could be in some way related to the quarantine phenomenon taking place in the heart of London.

  "Meanwhile, we have learned from an inside source at the Pentagon that as of late this afternoon, Guardian has been placed at the top of the FBI's Most Wanted List. It's believed that this action comes in response to Guardian's destruction of invaluable historic property in Jerusalem and the fight with London authorities we mentioned earlier, in addition to some further evidence we're told involves a murdered Los Angeles Police detective. International law enforcement agencies around the globe have received detailed reports about this man and the danger he is believed to represent. An official statement from the FBI is expected first thing tomorrow morning."

  What?!

  Stevens had given him no warning that Guardian's official status had been upgraded. What on earth was she thinking, making him a wanted man? Was she even listening to the report he gave during the conference call?

  Borrows left Israel for England, and she knows it proving he had nothing to do with the disaster in Jerusalem. He had nothing to do with that Detective Drexel's death. And even if he did tear up some historic site in Israel, this is an extreme reaction-there's no logical reason for it....

  A phrase popped into his head that he'd learned a few years ago from one of his instructors at the FBI Academy. It was a time-tested, reliable aphorism that could explain the most irrational of actions.

  When reason fails, fear prevails.

  Dusk settled over the River Thames with no fog in sight. The surface stood eerily calm; no boats disrupted her. Not even a cool breeze blew. All was still.

  Bright lights shown across the water-streetlights, docks, Big Ben, businesses, skyscrapers, hotels-and those lights were reflected in a bright orange hue atop the silky smooth surface of the river.

  It was almost hard to believe that just across the river there were hundreds of thousands of people. Every so often, tiny spots of movement could be seen along the city streets as people walked to and fro, though none approached the Thames. No escape attempts from within had been seen since the barrier was put into place. The calm, everyday actions of those on the inside left outside observers with a strange sense of dread.

  These were not the actions of people being held against their will.

  Grant and his companions stood at the edge of the water near the far end of Jubilee Gardens, a small park adjacent to the London Eye. The docks and bridges were packed with crowds waiting, watching, but this dark nook didn't have as much of a view and so the numbers were thinner. In fact, they managed to secure a space along the shoreline more or less to themselves, and Alex dissuaded any pedestrians milling about from approaching by making them worried of the dark.

  And it was dark, so dark that unless you were right next to someone, you couldn't make out their features. All the better for what they needed to do.

  Morgan turned to Grant and gave him an unspoken signal.

  He faced the London Eye, which was to the group's immediate left, and focused his mind on the enormous mechanical apparatus with all his might and the power switch in particular.

  The Eye flickered to life, its multitude of lights and spotlights blinking on. And it spun.

  A slow swell of curious murmurs from the crowds along the shore began to build, and numerous hands and arms were pointed in the direction of the giant wheel.

  The spinning grew faster. The Eye was equipped with various colored lights, used separately from one another at nighttime for dramatic effect. Grant forced them to shift with the rapidity of a strobe light at a rock concert, and soon all eyes had turned away from the city across the river and locked onto the Eye.

  Grant pushed it a bit faster, careful now not to strain the structure beyond its capability. Morgan reminded him earlier that it wasn't meant to move at high speeds and wouldn't be able to withstand a workout like this for long.

  "Go," he whispered.

  Hector carried a large duffel bag over one shoulder, which he placed at the edge of the water. With help from Alex, he unzipped it and allowed its contents to fall out. A long rope ladder spilled out; he secured one end of it to a park bench, while Alex fed the remainder into the river.

  Once done, Alex knelt slowly over the rope at the river's edge. She had one foot on the ladder's first rung, the other dangled over the water. Quickly, one foot after the other, she descended until she hung just below the shoreline, close enough to touch the water.

  "Ready," she called out softly.

  Grant turned loose of the Eye's lights but left them on and gave the wheel one final nudge to keep it spinning for several more minutes. Then he approached the water's edge and climbed down after Alex until he was just above her on the rope ladder. Julie followed, readying herself at the top to follow once Grant was clear.

  With slow breaths to calm himself, Grant focused his mind on the dark water below and pushed at it with his mind. Ever so carefully, so as not to noticeably disturb the surface or cause too much noise, he pushed down until a bubble grew, and Alex immediately descended the wet rope into the empty space he'd created.

  Grant followed cautiously, his powers focused on the water, growing the bubble large enough to accommodate all of them, while never making it so big that it drew attention from above. Only a tiny hole of air at the top of the bubble breeched the surface, allowing them to enter.

  Alex reached the bottom and Grant heard a squish as she landed in the mud on the bottom of the river. She whispered up, "The ladder comes up a little short. You'll have to jump."

  Grant hopped down with ease into the slimy mud, but Julie, who followed, struggled to get her feet into the correct rungs of the ladder, and slipped.

  Grant caught her, both of them landing flat on their backs in the muck. The bubble's edges quivered and threatened to falter as Grant's concentration lapsed for a split second when he hit the ground, but he snapped back to attention and held the bubble firm.

  In truth, it wasn't the fall that made his concentration waver. It was seeing his sister's deterioration. She hadn't been the same after the long hours of toil she'd put in in Jerusalem. He would never say anything out of fear of making her feel worse about it, but he'd seen her several times on the plane having difficulty just sitting still.

  He stood and helped Julie to her feet.

  The others continued to descend the ladder until they gathered in a tight grouping at the bottom. Their breath came out in wisps of freezing condensation.

  "Everyone all right?" Grant checked. "Are we all here?"

  "This ... this is really weird," Alex observed. "Plus, we don't get frequent flyer, onboard snack, or even a nice view."

  "`To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive,' according to Robert Louis Stevenson," said Morgan, shivering and taking in the soundless void around them. "We're making a very strong case against that argument here."

  It was cold under the river, the air as moist as a rain forest. They elected not to use any lights, relying only on the dim city lights that filtered through from above; the Thames wasn't all that deep, so using light down here would only draw attention.

  "Explain to me again why this is going to work?" Fletcher whispered in the bizarre, now flattened bubble of air they stood in, water surrounding them on all sides. With one finger, he poked a hole in the bubble, but nothing happened aside from his finger getting wet.

  Even with their eyes adjusting to the dark, it was almost impossible to see down here. Grant held Julie's hand tightly in his, and she shivered violently in the cold, caked in the freezing mud as she was. Grant put an arm around her shoulders to steady her and looked into her eyes. />
  She nodded affirmingly back at him, but she couldn't fully hide her fear. The sooner this was over, the better.

  "We don't know that it will," Morgan replied. "We're twenty-five feet under the largest river in England. We're hoping that the barrier doesn't extend this far down. We know they tried boats and even swimming. But who'd plan for anyone walking across on the river bottom? It would be an easy oversight to make on the part of whoever's erected this barrier to not bother keeping it in place under the water. Conversely, authorities on the surface will likewise assume that there's no point in sending divers down. It's a loophole, we hope."

  Grant began to walk and the bubble followed his movements, urging the others to keep pace. Aside from Julie, Daniel seemed to have the most trouble with it, his cane getting stuck in the mud more than once. Lisa approached him several times and tried to offer her assistance, but he wouldn't accept it. Finally she gave up and moved away from him.

  Julie meanwhile couldn't stop trembling. Grant knew she'd refuse help if asked, but he did use his powers to keep her feet from squelching too deeply into the mud. The walk was taking forever.

  A few minutes later, Morgan's voice broke the silence. "The river is thought to be the home of angels who have reportedly been seen floating across its surface like white specters."

  "Super," Alex said. "Thanks for the trivia."

  Morgan's random information didn't scare Grant, but his arms did get goose bumps as he peered through the dark water around them. They were over halfway there now, but the precariousness of their situation suddenly hit home, and the water felt a little more threatening, so dark and surrounding them wherever he turned ...

  Nobody spoke. They just walked. Muddy footstep after muddy footstep, the bubble inching its way through the water.

  A few minutes of walking later, they came upon the riverbank on the opposite side, and with extreme concentration, Grant was able to send another length of rope up out of the water and onto land. If they'd hit the target area they were hoping for, there should be a white statue jutting out from the primary embankment upon which he could tie off the rope.