Blackout b-1

by Robison Wells

  “I’m not going to let you get hurt.”

  “The Green Berets have our backs,” she said. “You give them info, and they’ll take care of me.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t worry,” she said with a grin. “If some thirty-year-old meathead comes rushing in to shoot the bad guys, I’m not going to fall for him.”

  She let the words hang in the air for a minute, and he didn’t know what to say. Don’t worry—I’m not going to fall for someone else. Was that really what she meant? Did that mean she’d already fallen for him?

  There was a blare from the PA system, and it stung his ears.

  “All Lambda recruits report to conference room A. All Lambda recruits report to conference room A.”

  “Well,” he said, with a quick exhaled laugh. “That’s bad timing.”

  Aubrey grinned, staring at him with those complex eyes. He could look at them forever.

  She put a hand behind his neck and pulled him down to her, and before he could realize what was happening, their lips touched.

  It was his first kiss, and he didn’t know what to do, but his brain let go and emotions took over. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her close, concentrating on the texture of her smooth, wet lips, and the smell of her skin, sweet with the lingering smells of the day—soap and toothpaste and fabric softener.

  “All Lambda recruits please report to conference room A. All Lambda recruits please report to conference room A.”

  She pulled back and grinned. “Time for a meeting, soldier.”

  FORTY-ONE

  LAURA SAT IN THE THIRD row of folding chairs—close enough to look engaged but not so close as to be particularly noticeable. She planned nearly everything she did now, trying to anticipate the officers’ interpretations of her actions. It was exhausting, but she needed to fit in. This was a golden opportunity.

  On the other hand, sometimes she wondered why she tried so hard. Looking around the room, she saw nothing but a bunch of kids. They’d all been drilled about military decorum, but they weren’t soldiers yet, not by a long shot. This meeting was obviously important—there were half a dozen observers—so most everyone sat up straight and did their best to look like they belonged in the army, but Laura wondered how the commanding officers had any faith in this group.

  The grizzled sergeant major stood at the front of the room and looked out over the class. “It looks like not everyone made it through training. We started with thirty-four, and we’re down to twenty-six. I’d guess that if we put you through more rigorous training, that number would be cut in half, or even more. But as we don’t have time for more rigorous training, we’ll have to do with what we’ve got.

  “You’ve all proven yourselves to be competent, and an asset to the special forces. We’ve been closely watching every aspect of your training, and a team of experts—psychologists, tacticians, doctors, veterans—has been evaluating how best to handle you.”

  He paused, watching the faces as though he expected a reaction, but Laura didn’t give him one. She merely stared straight ahead as she’d been taught to, listening carefully, taking mental notes, not wanting to miss a word.

  “As we mentioned last week, we’re fighting fire with fire. Some of you will be formed into the exact same kinds of teams that work so well for our terrorist friends. All of you, when you leave here today, will be given a bracelet that indicates you’ve been tested and found healthy. You haven’t been in the outside world for a couple of weeks, but these bracelets are more important than any driver’s license or passport. These bracelets tell the world that you’re clean—that you’re just regular old teenagers.”

  There was a hand in the back of the room, and the sergeant major cleared his throat before calling on the boy—Gary, a kid Laura had gotten to know. She knew most of the Lambdas by now. She wished she could recruit a few of them, but that was too much to ask for.

  “Aren’t we contagious? Should we really be back in the general population?”

  The man turned to the FBI woman, who looked the same as she had a week ago, only with dark circles under her eyes.

  “You’ll be under strict adult supervision the entire time, and you will have no contact with other children—other teenagers—who you could infect.”

  “What if it mutates again?” Michelle asked.

  “We have no idea what the long-term consequences of the virus are,” the woman answered. “All I can say is that we are looking at it from every possible angle. You’ve been out of communication with the outside world but—”

  The sergeant major looked tired of being interrupted. “But that’s all a secondary concern at the moment. Right now, we have a job to do. I’m going to make this very clear, so that no one has a false impression. First of all, I’ve witnessed the training of each of you, and I can very clearly state that no one here is Superman. You may be able to do something very impressive, but you’re not invincible. Also, the Green Berets are known as one of the finest fighting organizations on God’s green earth—I’d go so far as to say they’re the finest—but we’re going to take you into combat, and in combat people die. We will not take unnecessary risks with you, but we won’t coddle you, either. If you have any reservations about that, speak now. There’s no dishonor in withdrawal.”

  An aide handed him a clipboard, and the sergeant major looked down at the sheet. “I’m going to call out your assignments and point you in the right direction. Wolf, Henson, and Read—come over here and meet with Captain Garrett.” The three of them stood timidly, and then hurried to the waiting Green Beret. They were a team.

  “Sola, over here.” Josi stood and walked to a woman at the side of the room. By now Laura could read insignias better, and the woman was from army intelligence. It seemed like a perfect fit for an ability like Josi’s.

  “Samuelson,” the sergeant major called.

  Laura turned to look at the tall blonde and wished for the hundredth time that she had Nicole’s power. It would make Laura’s plans so much easier. She missed having Alec’s mind-control abilities to cover up her schemes.

  “Lambda Samuelson,” he said, “you’re in a different situation, but one I think you’re ideally suited for. Please come up here and meet with Mr. Morgan from the State Department.”

  That seemed to make sense. Nicole’s powers wouldn’t be of any use on the battlefield, but she could be perfect in a diplomatic role. Or as a spy.

  “Cooper, Parsons, and Hansen.”

  Laura sighed inwardly but stood up and smiled. Aubrey Parsons and Jack Cooper had an intriguing pair of skills and Laura had just heard a few whispers about their midnight mission together in Salt Lake, fighting a Lambda who could terrify people with her mind. They seemed like a good team. But they were a pair—a couple, it seemed like—and that would only make it harder for Laura to work with them. She’d always be the third wheel, and that wasn’t good if Laura ever needed to manipulate one of them.

  “The three of you come over and meet with Captain Rowley.” Aubrey and Jack moved toward the captain and Laura followed behind.

  He led them into a small room with a table and four chairs. After closing the door, he turned to look at them.

  “Welcome to the ODA,” the captain said, with a grim smile. Laura knew the designation by now—Operational Detachment Alpha. It was a Greet Beret unit.

  Rowley spoke. “I’ll tell you right up front that we’ve got a challenge ahead of us. We’ve got Jack Cooper, the human telescope—”

  “Among other things,” Jack said.

  The captain stopped, as if he was about to say something, but then continued. “Then we have Aubrey Parsons, the Invisible Girl. And finally we have Laura Hansen, Supergirl, the only one of the three of you who can pass the army physical fitness test—and get a perfect score doing it.”

  He sat on the edge of the table and looked at Laura. She tried not to grin too much at his assessment of her.

  “Hansen, it’s a pity that women can’t serve in th
e special forces, because I have no doubt that you could show our best men a thing or two. I’ve watched your training. Parsons, after your demonstration last night you strike me as an asset that could be very valuable to our organization, so long as we utilize you effectively. If we had six months to train you, you could be one of the top tactical soldiers this army has ever seen. But we don’t have six months to train you. In fact, we have no time at all, and we’re going to have to rely on your current skill set.”

  He looked at Jack.

  “As for why we have you, it’s because you and Parsons seem to be ideally suited to work together—complementary powers. I don’t know how your brain works, but you’re better than any sensor package.”

  As he spoke, Rowley gestured broadly with his hands. “Our team will be focused on special reconnaissance and Parsons, you’re going to be our primary asset. Cooper, you’re tasked with keeping track of anything and everything that she does. And Hansen, for now you’re the bodyguard. That may change, because you have a lot of potential.”

  Laura nodded. It was fine, for now.

  “What does special reconnaissance mean?” Aubrey asked.

  “It means that we’re not a combat team, at least not primarily. It means that we—you—sneak in wherever we’re going and find what we’re looking for. It’ll be a lot like the mission at the school—you gather information and relay that to us so we can make decisions about what action to take.”

  Laura finally spoke up, unable to control her curiosity any longer. “So, where are we going?”

  The captain clapped his hands together. “We’re getting on a plane. And we’re doing it this morning.”

  FORTY-TWO

  THE TWENTY-SIX LAMBDAS WERE LOADED onto a green camouflage bus, along with a handful of soldiers. Behind and in front of them were at least two Humvees that Jack could see, but he could identify a total of seven engines, so there had to be something else in the convoy.

  Captain Rowley had told them that commercial flights had been halted weeks ago, and every major airport was acting as a makeshift military airfield. Dugway was fifty miles from Salt Lake International, across a mostly empty strip of road. Even the towns on the highway were dark as they passed, and rumor spread around the bus that whole cities were being evacuated. Jack didn’t know how much of that was true, but it was eerie to pass the shadows of McDonald’s and gas stations—places that never closed but were now empty and dark.

  Aubrey was holding his hand but talking to Laura. It turned out that she wasn’t from Utah at all, but from Colorado, and had been camping down in southern Utah when the dam had been destroyed. She was trying to run, to get far away from more terrorist activity, but ended up right in the middle of it.

  “I was hitchhiking,” she said. “I don’t remember much. My friends wanted to go east, back to Denver, but I wanted to go farther into Utah—to someplace no terrorist would ever care about.”

  Jack raised his eyebrows. She was a tiny, gorgeous girl. Hitchhiking was asking to be murdered.

  “Don’t forget,” she said with a smile. “I can handle myself in a fight. Anyway, we drove west—the trucker who picked me up said he was going to some place called Huntington. We didn’t make it a hundred miles—we fell into a stupid canyon. Terrorists knocked out a bridge. I survived—” She looked a little embarrassed, maybe guilty. “I can survive a hundred-foot fall, I guess. But he didn’t. Rescue teams found me at the bottom of the canyon.”

  Aubrey nodded and placed her free hand over Laura’s. “That’s actually not that far from where we’re from. Huntington’s kind of right over the mountain.”

  “I guess that’s how we all ended up in the same place.”

  Aubrey and Laura started chatting about their abilities, and Jack leaned his head on the window and stared outside.

  Somewhere, very high up, was a bird. At first he thought it was a plane, but he couldn’t get a good look at it. It disappeared high over the top of the bus before he could focus in on it.

  There was a glare from low morning sun, and Jack tried to unlock the window to get an unblocked view.

  “They’re locked,” someone across the aisle said. “I already tried mine.”

  Jack glanced over to see who it was—a kid who could somehow control electricity—and when Jack looked back out the window there was no sign of whatever it was.

  “Keep it closed anyway,” someone else said. “It’s too cold out there.”

  He craned his neck, trying to find the bird. Something about it didn’t seem right.

  Jack sat back in his seat, and started listening to the conversations in the bus. He wasn’t sure if that was dishonest or not. Everyone knew what he could do. He didn’t even feel sneaky. He was getting better with his powers all the time, and he could focus on one conversation at a time and ignore the others.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” a girl was saying several rows ahead of him. “I’m fifteen years old. I shouldn’t be in the army.”

  “You’re a freaking monster,” a guy responded. “You can take care of yourself.”

  She didn’t seem to be offended at being called a “monster,” and Jack immediately knew who he was listening to. A girl named Krezi—a powerful Lambda 5D, like Laura—who could shoot some kind of laser or fire or something from her hands.

  “I know I can take care of myself,” Krezi said. “But that’s not the point. Should every person who can fight be forced into the army?”

  “They gave you the option,” the guy answered. “You didn’t have to come.” From the tone of his voice, they’d had this conversation before.

  “Yeah, some option. We could come and fight or we could stay locked up in Dugway indefinitely. In case you haven’t noticed, even though we’re all helping the army now, they haven’t taken these bombs off our ankles. They don’t trust us. They’re just using us because they don’t have a lot of options.”

  “But isn’t that the whole point? Do you think that they’d risk a fifteen-year-old girl if they had any better ideas? We’re at war.”

  “I can shoot energy from my hands,” she said. “Is that really superior to a Green Beret shooting bullets from his gun? Do they need me so bad?”

  “But you don’t look like a Green Beret. That’s the whole point. You’re—”

  Jack stopped listening. He’d heard all the arguments before. He’d had them himself.

  He looked out the window again. The Great Salt Lake spread out in the distance like a giant blue blanket. The lake was dead, like the Dead Sea. He’d heard it was so salty that nothing could live in it—no fish, just algae and brine shrimp that made the lake stink.

  There was that bird again, flying toward them.

  It wasn’t a bird.

  It was a—something—and it was carrying a person.

  “Hey,” Jack shouted, nearly tripping over Aubrey as he pushed his way out into the aisle and toward the soldiers at the front of the bus. “There’s something out there. There’s something—someone—flying.”

  Everyone jumped to the windows, blocking his view for a moment.

  “It’s coming right at us,” he said.

  There was a sudden chatter from a machine gun, behind them, and then the radio squawked. The soldier on the other end was frantic. “Unidentified bogey coming in from the south.”

  A second gun started, right in front of the bus—it was the .50 cal machine gun on the roof of the Humvee ahead of them.

  They were the terrorists. They had to be.

  And then suddenly the bus slammed to the side, rising up for a moment on two wheels, and then crashing back to the pavement. The driver tried to regain control and swerved sharply.

  There was a huge dent in the ceiling, and a hand—a claw?—was tearing through the roof of the bus.

  The soldiers barked at everyone to get to the floor, and then Jack was nearly knocked down by the shattering pops of their M4s.

  He clamped his hands over his ears, but it didn’t do any good. It was so loud he
felt like he could barely move.

  Someone in the bus—the girl he’d heard before—began firing blasts of white-hot light up through the roof.

  The bus slowed and turned sharply, and then Jack picked out the whump-whump-whump of flat tires.

  Jack tried to get up enough to see Aubrey, but she was out of sight—she must have been hiding down between the seats. Good.

  The ceiling was perforated with holes, and he didn’t see any sign of the thing that had been on the roof.

  And then, as if pulled by some unseen force, the three soldiers at the front of the bus slammed into the windshield. It shattered into a million pieces, and they tumbled out onto the road. The driver tried to stop the bus, but it rolled right over the men.

  The radio was filled with shouts—frantic, desperate calls for help and barked orders.

  The driver was yanked from his chair, his seat belt shearing, and he flew to the pavement. Jack jumped forward, mashing his foot on the brakes and trying to get control of the wheel.

  Ahead of him, the two Humvees were stopped, dealing with their own attacks. Someone—a small person dressed all in black—was climbing on the roof of one, trying to open the gun hatch. Another was crouched in the street, throwing something—or shooting something?—at the other Humvee.

  There was a sudden whoosh and rush of air, and someone swooped into the bus through the missing windshield. He was dressed in black, like the others, and Jack could see his face—he couldn’t have been any older than Jack. He raised his hands, but was immediately thrown back onto the pavement by Krezi’s bolts of energy and a blast of lightning from the kid.

  With a screech, the clawed thing on the roof began tearing through the sheet metal again. It only took a quick swipe for the already-damaged roof to give way, and the Lambda collapsed into the bus.

  He looked like Nate, back at the dance. His skin wasn’t skin—it was something else, some kind of metal or stone. His hands were three-fingered hooks.