by Sophie Davis
Once we were alone, I set him down and crouched to his face level.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Can we play horsie?” he countered.
For someone so young, he was really good at changing the subject.
“Sure. But you know you don’t need to be scared of Epsilon, right?”
“Mr. Brand says you can be a horsie, too,” Alex countered.
“Did he?”
“Yep. That’s why he doesn’t like you. Why doesn’t Mr. Brand like horsies?”
Standing, I groaned inwardly and started walking again. It was a sure bet that whatever conversation Alex overhead had been more colorful than the child realized.
“Brand is a horsist. He probably hates teddy bears and cute bunnies, too,” I grumbled as we entered the nursery.
Alex and I played with blocks, read stories, and drew more pictures. My artistic abilities were sorely lacking, and my little stick version of Alex looked like he had a broken neck.
“I have to go away,” I said after a while. “Just for a few hours, though.”
Alex nodded, using green to color the sun in his drawing.
“But Mr. Kelley and Mr. Ian and Penny will be here with you,” I continued. “If you want, I bet some of the kids from Clearwood would play with you.”
He stiffened, the point of his pencil cracking under too much pressure. I gently pried the pencil loose and gave Alex an undamaged one with the same hue.
“You know,” I tried again, voice way too cheery. “Most of them can morph. If I ask, I bet they’ll put on a show for you before bedtime. That’s fun, right?”
“Pete the Platypus?” Alex asked hopefully.
I had no idea what he was talking about but hated to disappoint him. So, I sort of lied. To a child. I was horrible at this.
“Um, yeah. Totally. I’m sure they know that one.”
When Alex drew a scene he was viewing, his pictures were phenomenal. Extremely lifelike, they were basically hand-drawn photographs. Otherwise, his art skills weren’t as detailed. So, when he showed me his drawing, I was impressed yet a little weirded out by the image.
Sure, the sun was green, the water was yellowish-orange, and the flowers in my hands were like none I’d ever seen. But the people in the drawing were terrifyingly realistic. Erik and I stood to one side, each of us holding one of Alex’s hands. Henri and two people I didn’t recognize were off in the distance. Crane and Brand sat at a table with wine glasses of purple liquid.
At first, I assumed the girl coming up behind them must be Penny. When I looked closer, there was no mistaking the choppy black hair and inky eyes.
“Cadence?” I asked, surprised.
“She’s hiding,” Alex said. “Like Henri.”
It took me a minute to recall the last time someone had mentioned Cadence’s whereabouts. UNITED had lost contact with that team of agents after they went to investigate Anya’s last known location in France.
“Have you seen Cadence?” I asked Alex.
He shook his head. “Too dark. She keeps to shadows.”
“How do you know it’s Cadence then?”
I didn’t know much about the mechanics of remote viewing. Strong Viewers—like Alex and even Frederick—could view people they’d met or formed a connection with. Alex had spent time with Cadence, and she’d been an integral part of getting him away from TOXIC and Mac. Yet, I didn’t understand how Alex knew Cadence was the one he was seeing when it sounded like only shadows and a silhouette.
“Just do.” Alex shrugged one shoulder, as if it were really that simple.
Maybe it was. Maybe I was just overcomplicating things. I ruffled his hair and he giggled.
“Hopefully we’ll see Cadence soon,” I said.
“We will,” Alex promised. He tapped the picture. “She helps us get here.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Erik
“It’s perfectly normal. Everyone experiences it,” Janelle assured Kip. It sounded like she was discussing the changes the body goes through during puberty, and I snickered.
“What if I mess up?” Kip’s leg was bouncing up and down so much, it made me queasy to watch. We were on the flight to New Mexico, and he wasn’t handling his nerves well. I tried to be understanding, since it was his first mission.
“Don’t mess up,” Talia teased from the back of the hover. She was raiding the cache of new tech gadgets that Ian’s weapons experts had developed.
“Ignore her,” Brand intoned. “Talia messes up all the time. Miraculously, she’s still alive.”
“I do not,” Tals fired back.
“No, but she did mess up her first mission,” I told Kip in voice low enough that Talia might not hear.
“Really?” Kip asked.
“Really?” Talia echoed inside my head. So much for her not hearing me. “That’s a horrible story to tell him right now.”
“What happened?” Kip pressed.
I’d intended to make him feel better by sharing the experience. In hindsight, it was a horrible tale to tell Kip. Talia had been stabbed on her first mission. My own inaugural mission wasn’t much more inspiring; I broke my ankle jumping from too high and Henri had to carry me.
“If you just follow orders, you’ll be fine,” Brand interjected. He knew the disastrous outcome of that first mission and probably didn’t think it appropriate with Kip’s anxiety. “That goes for all of you. No mission is easy, but this one is going to be more difficult than any you’ve been on.”
Talia poked her head through the doorway separating the main cabin and the weapons area. “That’s unnecessarily dramatic, don’t you think?”
Brand rolled his eyes. “Are you going to argue with everything I say?”
She pretended to consider the question seriously. “Until we jump out of this hover.”
“It’s not dramatic,” Janelle interjected suddenly, her face unusually pale.
I slid my feet into a pair of shiny black boots and stopped short when I realized the laces and buckles were merely decorative.
“She’s right,” Miles called from the cockpit. “You didn’t see it, kid. We were close enough to the Isle to see the beginning of the attack, and the girlie insisted on watching the rest on the onboard screen.”
“That was the Privileged,” Talia pointed out. “This is a Nightshade facility.”
“With Privileged security,” Brand reminded her.
Intel suggested Gretchen had sent a small contingent of her people to help Nightshade guard the hostages. Personally, I thought it was more speculation than fact, since all we really knew was that the guards were Talented. Just because Gretchen and Nightshade were in bed together on certain matters, it didn’t mean they were now her own private black ops team.
I glanced up at Brand. “We’ve been in battle. You know that. The attack on the islands looked a lot like other attacks we’ve seen. The Privileged are good. So are we.”
“You saw the battle?” Janelle asked, but she wasn’t looking at me. Her question was for Talia.
Miles’ next comment from the front of the hover interrupted Tals before she could respond. “It’s the way they attacked. It was like they were all on the same page, hell the same damn line, of the book. Like they shared a single thought, a single brain.”
“They’re organized,” I said slowly, hoping to curb the terror building inside of Kip. Examining a small screen on the heel of the right boot, I scanned my finger. Nothing happened. “Any well-trained army should have that level of coordination.”
“This wasn’t coordination. It went beyond that.” Janelle pointed at the boots. “Toggle the switch on the sole. That turns on the screen. Then you can enter your data and the boots will shrink down to the size you need.”
I smiled. “Thanks.”
“Nightshade tech could be a different story, though,” Talia said, emerging from the storage bay. She fastened a small belt around her waist and tightened the straps. “The girl we fought at the McDono
ugh School had this vest thing that shot dampening coils. My powers didn’t work at all once those suckers were around me.”
Brand’s gaze transferred from Talia to Kip. “See? She screws up all the time, and she’s still alive.”
“How did you guys see the attack on the Isle?” Janelle pressed.
Visions of the future made most people uneasy. They made me uneasy. Aside from telling a select few, none of us who’d been there during Kenly’s vision had divulged the source of the warning.
“Kenly saw it. In a vision,” Kip replied. On Pelia, gazing into the future must not have been a touchy subject.
Janelle swallowed thickly. “What sort of vision? Was she viewing the attack?”
“Not exactly.” Palming a short steel blade to test the weight, Talia looked between Janelle and me. “More like watching the future.”
“She’s a Visionary.” Janelle appeared lost in her thoughts for a minute. “So, you both saw the battle in a vision inside Kenly’s head?” she finally asked. Her eyes shot back and forth between me and Talia.
“Why so many questions, Longpre?” Brand cut in. “This really isn’t the time.”
“Right. Sorry.” She studied Talia for a few more seconds. “It’s just, I could’ve sworn I saw you there during the attack. I must’ve been hallucinating.”
My girlfriend laughed uneasily. “Weird,” she mused.
Talia’s reaction was peculiar, like there was a chance Janelle had in fact seen her somehow.
“Five-minute arrival warning,” a voice informed us through the craft’s comm system. “Secondary cloaking shields engaged. Autopilot engaged.”
A moment later, Miles came through the opening to the cockpit. He leaned in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. “Don’t forget, we only have a sixty second window once we reach the drop zone.” He jabbed a finger in Kip’s direction. “Talking to you, kid. No hesitation. No time for second thoughts. Got me?”
Kip nodded as Talia tossed him a vest from the storage bay. He slid his arms through the armholes and patted the pockets. “Why don’t I have any weapons? At the very least, I need a gun.”
“Do you know how to use a gun?” Brand asked him.
“I know how to hunt,” Kip replied defensively.
“You don’t need a gun or any other weapons, they aren’t necessary for your job,” Talia interjected. “You have everything you need in that vest. Don’t use the boosters unless necessary. The adrenaline shots alone should be enough.”
Boosters had been just as controversial as Kip’s involvement in the mission. After the story Ian told us about Denna McDonough, Talia was firmly against letting Kip use boosters to enhance his abilities. I tended to agree. If everything went as planned, he would only be making a set of short jumps from inside the facility to escape pods around the mountains.
Still, nothing ever went as planned. This mission, more than most, had a lot of unknown variables. Having the boosters on hand, just in case, was a smart move. To prevent a nasty argument between Talia and Brand, I’d suggested adrenaline as an initial alternative. Depending on the reason Kip needed additional power—fatigue, transporting a group of individuals, needing to jump farther than the pods—the adrenaline might work. In the end, even Tals had admitted he should have the boosters as a backup. We had to be prepared for every scenario.
But Talia didn’t know that Kip wasn’t the only one using them.
“Two minutes until arrival,” the mechanical voice informed us.
“Line up. Erik, you ready?” Brand asked me pointedly.
With a curt nod, I stood. Talia was busy helping Kip with his chute and harness. I used the opportunity to nab a booster for myself and pocketed several more for later. Just in case. My girlfriend was going to kill me when she found out, but that was a problem for later.
Even with an entire storage bay of tech, most of which wasn’t even available on the black market yet, I chose to rely on my abilities instead of weapons. I did throw a few gadgets in my pack, though. Brand slid a kinetic gun into the holster on his belt and a parachute onto his back. Then, we joined Talia, Kip, and Janelle at the rear doors of the hover.
“Ready?” Talia asked everyone.
Brand squirmed at the sound of her voice inside his head. He was still uneasy about forgoing comms units in favor of our natural approach to conversing on missions. I clapped him on the back.
“You’ll get used to it,” I sent.
He didn’t look any more pleased to hear my voice rattling around inside his mind. The doors opened with a wave of Talia’s hand. She interlaced her fingers with mine on one side and Kip’s on the other. Janelle flanked my other side, with Brand on the far left. Summoning my power, I felt a hum of electricity as my body turned invisible. The others weren’t far behind.
“One, two, three, jump!” Brand commanded.
As one, the five of us leapt. The chutes were only a backup precaution for the three who couldn’t morph, in case we were separated during the jump. Together, Talia and I used telekinesis to control our group’s descent. Brand and Janelle were nervous, which was expected on any mission, and the telekinetically regulated skydive was new for them both. Kip, however, was terrified. This was all new for him.
I blocked his emotions from the entire group to keep us all from drowning under the weight of uncertainty.
“Impact in five, four, three…,” Brand started the countdown. Wind rushed in my ears, and the bright blue spot that was our target grew larger below.
The entry was our greatest risk of detection. Even invisible, our bodies made a large splash when they broke the water’s surface. The pond wasn’t supposed to be under constant surveillance, I just hoped the intel was accurate.
“Breathing masks on,” Brand barked.
Despite his earlier wariness at using mental communication, he enjoyed feeding orders straight into our minds.
I broke contact with Tals and Janelle to fit the mask over my nose and mouth. Both girls appeared beside me instantly, followed by Kip and Brand’s forms. I dropped my own invisibility to save the energy for later. Even with boosters, I’d expended a lot of power already. We weren’t even inside the facility yet, when my abilities would be paramount.
Once I had the breathing mask in place, I reached inside my pack and found one of the gadgets I’d taken from the storage bay: a power tether. Though it wasn’t the device’s official name, it was the most apt description. I slapped one end on my chest, beneath the adapti-suit.
“Everyone alive?” Brand asked. I swam to Talia and attached the tether to her belt.
Four affirmative responses answered Brand. I also hooked the tether to Janelle, Kip, and Brand before giving him the all-clear to proceed onward. According to Ian, the synthetic pond was built as an emergency escape route in case the facility was ever attacked. UNITED’s surveillance had registered no pods coming or going via the pond. So, either Nightshade didn’t know about the escape route, or they just didn’t use it.
“Okay, everyone on me. Talia, Janelle—take the sides. Erik in the back. Kip you stay in the middle,” Brand instructed.
“Erik, save your energy. Invisibility isn’t as important now as it might be later,” Brand continued. We swam deeper, down into water untouched by sunlight.
My friends were nothing more than shadows moving ahead of me. I followed the stream of bubbles coming from each of their breathing masks and barely noticed the fish that ambled past me. The water grew colder against my face and neck—the skin covered by the suit remained neutral and dry—and visibility diminished at the deeper depths. Thanks to my morphing talents and my hunter training, my eyes adjusted quickly.
Not everyone was so lucky.
“Erik, switch with me,” Brand ordered. “I can’t see anything.”
With a few powerful kicks of my legs, I dove below Kip and swam to take the lead. Brand remained stationary, waiting for everyone to pass him. Focusing my energy to my eyesight, I started searching for a tunnel entrance. The
stone side of the pond basin didn’t have any openings, at least none large enough for more than a hand to fit through.
“Isn’t one of the entrances supposed to be right here?” I sent.
“Where the side meets the bottom,” Brand sent back.
I dove deeper still and extended my hands in front of me. Running the tips of my gloved fingers down the wall, I found nothing.
“A little help,” I called to my girlfriend.
Talia swam up beside me. She expelled all the air from her lungs before pressing her small body flat against the rocky slope. Her gloved hands felt along the surface, but it was her the toe of her boot that finally found what we were looking for—a button that opened the entrance.
“Got it,” she sent.
“Take the lead, Talia,” Brand ordered, albeit grudgingly.
My girlfriend’s tiny feet were just inside the tunnel when waves rippled through the water, knocking us all off balance. The portion of the tether connecting Talia to me snapped.
“Erik!” Her shriek reverberated inside my skull.
“Don’t turn back!” I shouted. A second wave slammed me against the rocks, and an explosion turned the water an odd shade of greenish-orange. My back arched painfully, and I groaned.
“Brand? Janelle? Kip?” I managed. Thank goodness we weren’t using normal comms, since I had no air left in my lungs to speak.
“Fine,” Brand said. “I think I’m the only one still connected to you, though.”
“I’m here,” Janelle confirmed. A moment later, I saw her swimming toward me from above. “I hate to state the obvious, but I think we’ve been spotted.”
A piece of something metallic floated by me and I reached for it. One side was charred to a crisp, but the other bore a pattern that looked vaguely familiar.
Not a pattern, I thought, my heart filling with dread. An emblem. The Coalition emblem.
“Miles!” I screamed frantically.
“Erik? What’s happening?” Talia demanded.
“They shot down the hover. Miles was still on it!”