The God Peak

by Patrick Hemstreet

The president’s fair eyebrows rose. “There’s been talk of—? Whose talk?” Even from where he sat, Chuck could see that her eyes were on Joan Hand.

  “Carl, you want to explain your ideas to the president?” the admiral asked Colonel Fredericks.

  The officer cleared his throat. “Not in present company, ma’am. I think that’s a discussion for another time and place.”

  “Let’s have some of it now,” said President Ellis. “Mr. Yenotov, I’m sure you can understand that there are things we don’t know about Deep Shield that we might be able to find out by gaining access to the facility. If there are other cells or even stray operatives out there that Senator Bluth and Ted Freitag haven’t yet revealed, we’d like to know about them.”

  “Yeah,” said Mike. “I get that. If that’s the real reason you want in there. There’s a shitload of tech down there. War machines that would turn guys into supersoldiers. Weapons that would keep a sane person up all night just thinking about them. I hope I destroyed every last atom of it. I brought out some bots that are good all-purpose units. If your guys want to study those, great. I’d be happy to help them. So would Dice, I bet. I’d be less happy to tell you everything I know about Deep Shield—which is a lot—but I’d do it if it would help keep something like that from happening again. But Madam President, I’ll be damned if I give anybody access to what might be left of those death machines.”

  President Ellis was nodding. “Yes. I see. And I understand. But again, the decision about what happens to the mountain doesn’t lie entirely with me. I need you to understand that. All I can promise you is that when decisions are made, your input and special knowledge will be part of the process.”

  “What about Mini?” asked Lanfen. “Will you help us rescue her?”

  In answer, Margaret Ellis turned her gaze to Admiral Hand. “Joan, find out where these people are and give me your best assessment of an approach to reaching them and extracting Ms. Mause.”

  “Ma’am.”

  The president logged out of the call then, leaving the Zetas no closer to knowing their fate than they were before. Admiral Hand and Colonel Fredericks went their way shortly thereafter to see to their separate duties. A corporal appeared not long after that to assign the team to a pair of barracks trailers next door to the common room—men and Anton in one, women in the other—then escorted them to the mess tent.

  They were in the middle of dinner when they got the message that Eugene had regained consciousness and Joey was doing better and had been able to keep food down. Chuck bolted down the remainder of his dinner and headed for the infirmary, wondering how he was going to tell Eugene about Mini.

  He was halfway to the medical facility when he felt the tug on his consciousness and heard Lanfen’s light steps behind him as she ran to catch him up.

  “I’m the one who saw it happen,” she said. “I should be there.”

  Chuck took her hand. “I didn’t much like the tone of that meeting,” he told her. “I think the president was trying to tell us that what she’d like to do and what actually happens are two different things.”

  “Chuck, they’re probably going to ship us off to some ‘secure location’ as soon as they’ve tidied up the base camp and Eugene is ready to be moved. If we go into a place like that, there’s no guarantee we’ll ever come out again. Sara put the fear of petty gods into the Senate, and fear is a deadly motivator. What should we do?”

  “Find out what they’ve done with our wheels.”

  Lanfen chuckled. “Ooh. Very James Bond.”

  “Damn. I was going for James Dean.” He sobered. “This is going to be hard.”

  Lanfen squeezed his hand.

  Eugene was sitting up in his narrow bed when Chuck and Lanfen entered the infirmary’s tiny prefab ward.

  “Thank God, you’re here!” Euge said the moment he saw them. “No one will tell me anything except that you were all meeting with the president. Were you meeting with the president?”

  Chuck nodded. “Except for Joey. He’s still in the infirmary proper.”

  Euge paled. “What happened to him?”

  “It’s just a concussion, Eugene,” said Lanfen quickly. She put a hand on Chuck’s arm. “Which means he may need a little assistance from Chuck . . . again.”

  “Did we get them?” asked Eugene earnestly. “Did we get Sara?”

  Chuck took a deep breath. “Not in the way we’d hoped. Sara was able to free Tim and . . . there was a confrontation. They’re both dead.”

  Tears sprang to Eugene’s eyes and his lips formed a silent “no.” “What happened? I sort of lost track of things . . .”

  “Mini happened,” Chuck said. “When Sara dropped that tree on you, Mini just threw everything she had at Sara and Tim. And she had a lot. More than any of us realized.”

  “What about Mike?”

  “Mike’s with us now. So’s his son, Anton.”

  “What? How did that happen?”

  “Lorstad interfered,” said Lanfen. “We’re all fine. Bren and Dice got a little knocked around, but they’re okay.”

  Eugene looked from Chuck to Lanfen and back. “Okay, but it strikes me that you’re not telling me how Mini is. If she—if she killed Sara and Tim, then she’s not going to be all right with that. Where is she? I need to go to her.” He started to pull the blanket from his legs.

  Chuck stopped him. “Eugene, listen to me. Mini is with Lorstad.”

  “What? She went with—”

  “She didn’t ‘go with,’” Chuck said. “He and Alexis just took her. She passed out after she stopped Tim and Sara. Lorstad and Alexis swooped down in a stealth copter and zapped her away.”

  “I tried to take control of their aircraft,” said Lanfen, “and I was having an effect, too. Then Alexis revealed a talent none of us knew she had. She basically short-circuited my brain—paralyzed me long enough for them to get away. There was no other way to stop them.”

  Chuck felt a wave of mixed guilt and shame rock him. “There was a way,” he murmured. “I just couldn’t make myself do it.”

  “What do you mean?” Eugene asked, his voice raw, his eyes glittering. “What couldn’t you do to keep them from taking Mini?”

  In answer, Chuck said, “Do you remember when I healed Joey in the lab?”

  “Yeah. I remember.”

  “I did something similar for you. I went into your injuries and fixed them from the inside out. I’ve used it twice to heal and once to keep Decker from shooting down Lorstad’s helicopter. I think you can imagine what might happen if I decided to use it less benignly.”

  Eugene’s eyes widened. “God, Chuck, I’m sorry. It didn’t occur to me. I would never ask that of you. Never. But we have to get her back.”

  “Yes. Right now the question is, will we have the government’s help?”

  Eugene blinked. “Why wouldn’t we have the government’s help?”

  “Because the government isn’t a monolithic entity. Different factions apparently have different feelings about what should happen to us. I gather they’re in the process of duking that out as we speak.”

  Eugene’s dark eyes flashed with swift anger. “We don’t have time to wait for them to duke it out.”

  “Yes,” agreed Chuck, uneasily. “I know. Dice can guide us back to the Center, but if they move her, we’re screwed.”

  “No. No we’re not.” Eugene looked as if someone had passed an electric current through him. “Mini gave me something. Something we might be able to use to find her no matter where they take her.”

  He cupped his hands in front of him and stared at them intently, before opening them to reveal a gleaming doll-sized replica of Mini.

  “Oh my God, it’s Tinker Bell!” gasped Lanfen.

  Eugene said, “Mini gave me this when we were at the Center. She wanted me to be able to know what she was feeling and thinking when we weren’t together.”

  Chuck, amazed, peered at the tiny, light-filled golem. She was curled against the curve of Eug
ene’s fingers, her eyes closed, her head tilted to one side, her features soft.

  “Right now,” Chuck said, “it looks like she’s asleep. Apparently, they still have her sedated. How does she work?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. She’s my projection. I mean, I make her appear, by thinking about her, but somehow she’s also connected to Mini, so she reflects Mini’s state of mind. So, maybe Mini’s in touch with me somehow all the time. I don’t know.”

  He licked his lips. “Chuck, this is weird, but I feel as if she’s west of here. I mean, like, due west.”

  Chuck reached out a hand toward the sprite. “Is it okay if I . . . ?”

  Euge nodded.

  Chuck touched his fingertips to the radiant little construct. To his surprise, they tingled as if they had come into contact with an energy field of some sort. On a whim, he grasped Eugene’s wrist with his opposite hand. The result was swift and definite. He felt as if his entire being had become a compass needle set to point from Eugene to the person at the other end of the connection.

  “Do you feel it?” Euge asked. “I’m not just imagining it, right?”

  “No, Euge, you’re not imagining it.” Chuck turned to give the puzzled Lanfen a wry smile. “They can knock her out and take her anywhere in the world, Lanfen. It won’t matter. Eugene will be drawn to her like iron to a lodestone. She’ll lead us straight to her.”

  Lanfen returned the smile. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”

  Chapter 24

  Midnight

  By noon the following day, the team knew that their fate was precarious at best. To say there was divergence in the opinions within the government about what should be done with them understated the case. That Leighton Howard had forced them first to compliance, then to flight, seemed to mean nothing in some quarters. Yes, they’d been taken advantage of and abused, but they were dangerous. As long as they were alive and awake, they were a threat to everything America held dear. That was one party line, at least. Other versions of it were less extreme, but still ran to some version of guilty until proven innocent and featured incarceration or sequestration, testing, and interrogation.

  President Ellis proposed a process by which the Zetas would willingly and actively assist the government to pursue Kristian Lorstad and his associates, after which they would work within a system of government oversight to make their technology of benefit to the United States and the world at large. She was hailed as a hero by some elements within her government and pilloried by others. Only a handful of legislators felt that revealing the truth of the Pine Ridge debacle to the public was a good idea.

  “The consensus is, we should keep you a deep secret,” Margaret Ellis told them, “and restrict your movements.”

  They were alone with her telepresence in the common living area. Admiral Hand had set the laptop up, then withdrawn.

  “You mean deep-six us,” said Dice, his voice tight.

  The president raked her fingers through her hair; it looked as if she’d been repeating the gesture all morning. “Ironic, isn’t it? People who believe that your abilities make you ungovernable through an act of will imagine that they can govern you unwilling, or that you’ll submit to force.”

  “The thing is,” said Chuck, “we probably would submit to force if for no other reason than to prove that we’re not like Sara and Tim. But I won’t let my people be abused, Madam President.”

  “Margaret. No. Nor should you.”

  “And more important,” he added, “we need to get Mini back before Lorstad does something irrevocable to her. The Benefactors’ methodology imposes external stimuli on a quiescent mind. In Mini’s case, they’ll impose it on a mind that is not quiescent out of willingness to be part of the experiment. I have no idea what that would do to someone as brilliant and sensitive and powerful as Mini. I can’t let that go, Margaret.”

  She didn’t respond to that, but only gave him a look that expressed both understanding and regret. “The special forces guys have cleaned up your base camp and sent everything to DHS for disposition. The unit you’re with is essentially ready to bug out with short notice and the thinking is that you’ll be transferred to a secure DHS facility until—”

  “Until we’re disposed of, too?” asked Bren tartly.

  “Until something can be worked out.” The president hesitated, then added, “There are parties within government who see your talents as holding massive defensive potential.”

  Chuck and Dice traded glances. “Pardon me if we seem less than excited by that,” Dice said. “We’ve heard it before.”

  “Out of the damn frying pan and into the fire,” murmured Bren.

  Chuck leaned close to the laptop’s camera. “Madam President—Margaret—please don’t do that to us. Please.”

  “I have a meeting I need to prepare for,” she said. “I’ll keep you posted.” She rang off, leaving the team staring disconsolately at the screen.

  “That settles it,” Lanfen said.

  “The SUVs are in the picket line with the other vehicles,” Dice said blandly.

  “You have the keys?” asked Brenda.

  His smile was tight. “We don’t need keys.”

  “Are you talking about escape?” asked Mike from the corner of the sofa, from which he’d watched the entire exchange. Anton sat beside him, reading an Avengers comic.

  Dice nodded.

  “I need to get Anton home,” Mike said. “I want to help you guys get Mini back, but I don’t want him to be part of this.”

  Anton looked up, a frown furrowing his brow. “Daddy, I don’t want to go home unless you’re going, too. Mommy really misses you. She cries every night. I hear her. And now that I’m gone, there’s only Darya to protect her. She needs us.”

  Chuck didn’t have to guess what that simple speech did to Mike Yenotov’s insides. He felt as if someone had just punched him in the gut.

  Mike ruffled his little boy’s hair. “Hey, Ant-Man, I can’t come home until we rescue Mini. But if you go home and tell your mom I’m all right and that I’m helping a friend get out of trouble, I think she’ll stop crying. What do you think?”

  “Yeah. I think it would make her feel good to know you were okay and just, y’know, helping Mini. Mini is nice.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked Lanfen.

  Chuck let himself sense what the others were thinking. It became easier to sort through the tangle of emotions with every attempt. If they needed to “bug out” before the unit did, then they would do it through stealth, not brute force. He hoped that would be duly noted by the various factions engaged in deciding their fate. At the moment, though, he couldn’t really spend a lot of time caring how they were viewed. He could only think of two things: Mini, and maintaining his friends’ freedom.

  There was a rap at the door of the quarters and Admiral Hand stepped into the room. She was alone, which was a bit unusual. She scooped up the laptop and tucked it under her arm, then turned to face Chuck.

  “We’re bugging out in the morning. Right at sunrise. That way we won’t be flashing headlights all over the place. You’ll need to report to your drivers at oh-five-hundred hours. Your vehicles are parked right behind this building so you may wish to assemble here earlier than that. I’ll send MPs to make sure you’re all up and about at oh-four-thirty. Everyone clear on the timetable?”

  Chuck looked at her speculatively and nodded. “Yes, I think we’ve got that. We’ll be rounded up at oh-four-thirty. I guess we ought to turn in early in that case.”

  “It would be a good idea.” Joan Hand moved to the door, then paused. “Smooth sailing,” she said, then slipped out of the room.

  The team exchanged glances.

  “Was that what I thought it was?” asked Brenda. “Did she just make it easier for us to escape?”

  “No one would ever be able to prove it,” said Dice, “but it sure looks that way.”

  “Midnight,” said Chuck, and everyone in the room knew exactly what h
e meant.

  The surveillance cameras were easy. Mike, Joey, and Dice were all capable of making them see whatever was wanted, which, in this case, was nothing. The human guards were something else again. Lacking Mini’s masterful illusions, Chuck was the only one among them who could remedy that. He knew it; they knew it. He had the ability to make the guards turn a deaf ear and a blind eye. The realization immersed him in a cold tide of dread. He had no question that he could disrupt the guards’ brain function. His question was whether he could do it without causing them permanent harm.

  There were any number of things he could do. He could switch the neurotransmitters at the base of the brain to the state that brought on sleep, but if he and his companions were tearing across America evading capture, he wouldn’t be there to flip the switches on again, and so far, he’d had to be in close proximity to a subject to affect them. He might try ramping up the production of adenosine, he supposed. The neuromodulator built up in the blood during waking hours, causing drowsiness, then broke down in sleep. Theoretically, if Chuck could dose the MPs with adenosine, they’d awaken when it was depleted, if not before.

  Theoretically.

  He leaned back on the sofa, closed his eyes, and gently thumped his head against the wall.

  “Oh, that can’t be good.”

  He opened his eyes to see Lanfen looking down at him. In her black sweater and skinny jeans, he thought she looked like Catwoman or Emma Peel. The sun had set an hour ago. Everyone else but Eugene had gone to their quarters to rest.

  I’m so tired.

  She sat next to him on the sofa. “You’re more than tired. What’s wrong? You’re spraying angst all over the place.”

  He glanced across the room to where Eugene was watching his Mini-pixie sleep. If he was spraying angst, Euge didn’t seem to notice. Possibly because he had too much of his own. Chuck took a deep breath. “I’m afraid, Lanfen. I’m scared. I’ve juggled half a dozen ways I can deal with the guards and they all terrify me.”

  “Why? You’ve successfully and safely healed two people—”

  “I’ve done more than that. I stopped Lieutenant Decker from shooting the copter down yesterday by creating a hiccup in his reflexes.”