And he was where Aubrey had been only moments before.
Jack searched for a gun, but there was nothing—they’d all been thrown out with the soldiers.
Laura tackled the beast, smashing him down to the floor with an enormous crash. The guy tried to speak, but his voice was an inhuman rumble. People were shouting for Laura to get out of the way so they could shoot him, but Laura didn’t listen. She threw a punch into his face, connecting with a sickening crunch. Before she could throw another, the thing launched her into the ceiling. Her body tangled against the jagged hole.
The monster stood, and was instantly hit by Krezi’s energy blasts. He stumbled backward, but the attacks only seemed to push him, not hurt him.
He took a step forward, and fell flat on his face.
Aubrey. It must have been her—she’d tripped him.
A soldier shouted at Jack, and he turned to see a whole team of Green Berets in front of the bus.
“Open the door,” one called. Jack searched for a moment before seeing the bent lever. By the time he got it open, the soldiers were spreading out around the bus. Someone stepped inside and started grabbing kids, pulling them from their seats and ordering them onto the street.
The monster was getting up again, but the blasts were targeted on his head now, and he was trying to shield himself with his arms.
Someone grabbed Jack, and pulled him from the driver’s seat.
On the street, it was harder to see what was going on inside the bus. He hoped Aubrey was keeping hidden. The whole convoy was devastated, every vehicle either damaged or burning, and the street was filled with soldiers who were trying to tend to the injured, or beat back the remaining enemies.
The bus shuddered, rocking back and forth, and then a hole erupted from the back. The monster fell out onto the pavement and began running in slow bounds off the road and into the brush.
The soldiers gathered the Lambdas from the bus and formed a defensive perimeter. Within minutes aircraft appeared, flying low over the demolished collection of vehicles. Jack could hear them overhead for quite a while, but they’d missed all the action. There was nothing for them to attack.
Cesar Carbajal was dead. He was the only Lambda to die. And though the soldiers didn’t make an announcement, Jack could hear every word they whispered to one another. Cesar hadn’t been killed by the terrorists—he’d taken a bullet. Sure, it was the terrorists’ fault that the battle started in the first place, but it still felt like a punch in the gut. This war—this thing they’d agreed to do—was deadly. Cesar had no way to defend himself; his power was all mental. He wasn’t even trained for combat.
Aubrey sat across from Jack on the pavement, her knees tucked up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs.
“This isn’t like what they talked about,” she said. “It isn’t like the girl at the school.”
“I know,” Jack answered.
“So many,” she said, gesturing weakly to a row of bodies lined up a few car lengths outside the perimeter.
Jack glanced over at the dead bodies. Eight teenagers. Just like him, except driven by—what? He’d never heard any demands from the terrorists. Did they just want to watch the world burn?
Aubrey spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. “In training they said the terrorists worked in groups of three or four. They didn’t talk about big attacks like this. They didn’t talk about battles. The terrorists never come out and fight the army.”
“They must have known who we are—what we’re going to do. They wanted to stop us.”
Jack crossed over to sit next to Aubrey and put his arm around her waist.
“I didn’t think it would be like this,” she said. “I mean, so many . . .”
Jack couldn’t see where the other bodies were being collected, but he heard the radios talking about more of them—the soldiers killed in the attack. There were three, and several more wounded.
This didn’t seem like any terrorist act he’d heard of. Granted, not a lot of details were ever given, but they never seemed like suicide attacks. Had they just underestimated the army? Were they unprepared?
Aubrey laid her head on his shoulder.
From the distant skies, Jack could hear the thumping of helicopter blades.
FORTY-THREE
THE HELICOPTERS EVACUATED THE LAMBDAS to the airport, where a variety of aircraft was waiting. Aubrey stared into the dim morning light around them, wondering what other dangers were lurking in the shadows, what monsters she was getting ready to fight.
They’d all started like she had. She’d been a normal girl until she got the virus. It hadn’t taken long before she shoplifted her first thing—a box of medicine that she couldn’t afford. It hadn’t seemed evil. It was for her dad, not her, and she knew the pharmacy could take the loss—it was owned by one of the wealthiest families in town. Still, she’d cried that night, all night, afraid that she’d be found out.
It got easier after that. She needed supplies for school—notebooks and pens and a new backpack—and then she needed school clothes. Nicole was helping by that point, telling Aubrey what to choose—which outfits were in style and which colors complemented Aubrey’s skin and hair. It had been so easy to steal—a sweater from here, a pair of jeans from there. They were big companies with plenty of money; Aubrey knew that a pair of jeans didn’t cost one hundred and fifty dollars to make—it was just a greedy corporation that could get away with huge prices. If they missed one or two pairs, then what difference did it make?
Aubrey couldn’t make a direct connection between shoplifting and terrorism—that was crazy—but there had to be some path, some series of bad choices. Like when Nicole had dared Aubrey to steal the principal’s car, and Aubrey had faked an ankle sprain to get out of it. What if she hadn’t? Stealing jeans was one thing, but stealing a car? And what about the parties she’d been to, the party where Jeff Savage brought ecstasy and Aubrey could have stolen all of it. Selling that would have paid their rent for months.
She wasn’t a terrorist, but what was she? A criminal? A thief who just wasn’t stealing anything at the moment?
She’d be better, she promised herself, though it felt hollow. How could she truly be better when she didn’t have any reason not to be? There was nothing here to steal, nothing to gain.
When the helicopter touched down at the Salt Lake airport after a short flight, Captain Rowley directed them to a waiting truck. Another of the Lambda teams was in tow, an officer leading them. The other groups—including Nicole—were being sent elsewhere. Everyone had a different flight to catch.
Aubrey’s team and the second group loaded into the truck, which took them to a small commuter plane guarded by four soldiers in full combat gear. The plane was only sparsely filled—ten soldiers were relaxing, their packs and weapons in the seats next to them. When they saw Captain Rowley, they stood as much as they could in the cramped plane and saluted.
“Men,” the captain said. “These are our Lambdas. They’ll be joining us for the next couple of missions.”
The men nodded as though they knew what was going on. Aubrey recognized a few of them from the mission at the school. None of them seemed thrilled at the prospect of working with kids, and one of them openly grimaced at Aubrey and Laura—two small high school girls.
The Lambdas made their way to the back of the plane, to where seats were still open.
In a moment the captain and the other team leader were in the small first-class cabin, looking over some paperwork. The aircraft began to taxi without any announcement from the cockpit. Aubrey had only ever flown twice—on a school choir trip that she’d gotten a scholarship for—and this all felt new and weird. She missed having a flight attendant to explain what was going on.
“So you’re supposed to save the country?” one of the soldiers asked, turning in his seat.
None of the teens answered.
“I asked you a question, Lambda,” he said, smiling but grim. “Don’t forget that we outrank you.�
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“That air force puke up front outranks you,” another one said. “The guy who refueled the plane outranks you.”
“I’m nineteen,” Laura said defensively. “I could join—”
The first man, a broad-shouldered guy with a square face and a scar along his chin, cut her off. “You could join, but you didn’t. You haven’t even made it through basic boot camp. You probably can’t do a push-up.”
“She can do a push-up,” Aubrey said. “She can do more push-ups than all of you combined.”
“Is that your superpower?” the second man said. “You’re Push-Up Girl?”
Aubrey wanted to say that Laura could break any of them in half, but she held her tongue.
“How about you, kid?” the square-faced soldier asked Jack.
“Just trying to help out.”
“Are you the one who is about as useful as my binoculars?”
Jack opened his mouth to answer, but the soldier laughed and smacked another man with the back of his hand. “They tell us we’re getting help and they send us a kid who can do everything that our equipment already does.”
“What about you, honey?” the other man asked Aubrey.
“She rolled her eyes!” the first laughed. “It’s going to be great working with kids.”
A voice from farther forward called back, “Shut up, guys.”
“I just was asking the nice young lady what amazing miracle she can perform.”
But before he could finish his sentence, Aubrey disappeared, and stood from her seat. His laugh faded a little into confusion as she climbed forward in the accelerating plane and took the man’s Beretta M9 from his gear. She removed the magazine, and then pulled the slide from the frame, just as she’d done a hundred times when target shooting in the hills of Mount Pleasant.
She reappeared in front of him, and dropped the three pieces of the gun in his lap.
“What the hell?” he shouted, grabbing at the gun. “What’s wrong with you, freak?”
“Don’t call me ‘honey.’”
“Hey,” someone called back, pointing angrily at Aubrey. “You do not touch weapons. That’s part of the deal.”
The exchange got the attention of Captain Rowley up front, who was hurrying awkwardly down the aisle as the plane bounced through the air.
“What’s going on?”
The square-faced man jabbed a finger at Aubrey. “She stripped McKinney’s sidearm. She was just suddenly here, with the thing taken apart.”
Aubrey was fully expecting the captain to tell his men to shut up and knock off their attitudes, but instead he barked at her.
“Is that true?”
“Well—”
“Yes or no, soldier.”
She was getting mad. “You told me I’m not a soldier.”
“You’re a Lambda,” he scolded, nearly shouting. “When you raised your hand a week ago and agreed to join the war effort, that put you in the army, and it put you under my command. You will respect these men and the orders they give you.”
Jack touched her arm and she shook him off.
The captain turned to face the other Lambdas. “You’re not here to put on a show, and we’re not here to baby you. If that’s what you expected, then you should have stayed in Dugway. There’s a war on, and if you can’t handle a little ribbing from your fellow soldiers then we can’t use you in this unit.”
He finally turned to the soldiers. “As for you, keep your mouths shut and your minds on our mission. We’re flying into hostile territory, and you can use that time to review our planning session. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir,” was the chanted reply.
He turned back to the Lambdas. “Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
FORTY-FOUR
AUBREY SLEPT THROUGH THE FLIGHT. It was only when the plane touched ground with a sudden uneven bump that she was jarred awake.
Jack was sitting quietly, looking out the window, one hand balled in a fist and pressed to his lips.
“Welcome to Seattle,” Rowley said, seeming to be in a better mood. “It’s one of the hardest-hit cities so far, and if you’ve ever been here before I think you’ll be surprised at what you find. I’m told the city center is a ghost town, and many of the suburbs are emptying out. Everyone’s heading inland.”
More military vehicles met them at the airport and drove them into the center of the city. They spent the day and night at a Marriott commandeered by the military. It was strange to see a Marriott surrounded by army vehicles. And not just Humvees, but some kind of big armored trucks. There were roadblocks on every street nearby, and some military personnel on the roof with enormous floodlights.
Aubrey and Laura were put in a room together, and the relative luxury felt like the opposite of everything they’d experienced for weeks. It had only been this morning when they’d woken up in the Dugway dorms, only this morning when Aubrey and Jack had kissed in the starlight.
That seemed like years ago. It had been before she’d really been inducted into the military, before all those deaths on the road. It was a different world now.
She wondered if her kiss with Jack was from a different life. Had she changed too much? She felt like a different person.
Laura let Aubrey have the first shower. By the time she dried her hair and went to bed, Aubrey was already mostly asleep anyway. It didn’t take much longer to drift away.
Breakfast came without them having to ask—it was room service, though it couldn’t have been the kind of room service the Marriott usually delivered—everything was in packages: boxes of cereal, cups of yogurt, and plastic bottles of milk. Still, it felt fresher than the MREs that they’d been eating for the last few weeks, and Aubrey was glad to get it.
Laura sat down in a big plush chair across from Aubrey’s bed. “So, I have a question. I wanted to bring it up last night, but you were kind of out of it.”
Aubrey nodded wearily. “Yesterday was . . . long. What’s up?”
Laura peeled back the lid of her yogurt and licked it. “The attack on the bus? I don’t think it was terrorists.”
“What do you mean? Who else would it be?”
Laura lowered her voice even though it was only the two of them in the room. “I heard about something similar before I got caught. And I heard about it again at Dugway. There’s a rebellion.”
“A rebellion?” Aubrey said. “Against what?”
“Against locking up all the Lambdas. Apparently there are Lambdas who have gathered together to fight against the army.”
Aubrey took a bite of cereal. “But we’re at war.”
“Did you want to get caught?” Laura asked. “Did any of us want to get caught?”
“The country needs us.”
Laura smiled and took a big spoonful of yogurt. “Tell me that you felt that same way when you broke in to the assessment facility to try to rescue Jack.”
“That’s different,” she said, though she wasn’t quite sure if it was.
“I think those Lambdas yesterday were part of the rebellion and they were trying to free more Lambdas to join their cause. Think about it: Would terrorists attack a full military convoy?”
Aubrey shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I don’t either,” Laura said. “But it doesn’t seem to fit anything we’ve heard about them. They don’t do suicide attacks, and they act in small groups.”
“But if it’s a rebellion, so what?”
Laura shook her head. “I don’t know. I just think it’s interesting.”
“I don’t think I’d want to be part of a rebellion that was killing American soldiers.”
“Even if the American soldiers are locking up American kids? Forcing them to kill?”
“Maybe I’ll think about it differently when they force me to kill,” Aubrey said, laughing a little and trying to pass it off as a joke.
“It’s not funny,” Laura said, suddenly more serious. “What do you think my job is? You’re th
e spy, but I’m the bodyguard. You spent the last week training how to sneak around and pick locks; I spent it learning how to fight.”
“Are you saying you’re going to join the rebellion?” Aubrey asked. She didn’t know what to make of Laura. She made Aubrey uneasy.
“No,” Laura said, with a wave of her spoon. “I just don’t know what to think about this.”
“Neither do I.”
They met upstairs in a suite that had been turned into a command room. Jack was already there, dressed in casual civilian clothes. It made Aubrey think about something she’d heard in history class, about combatants needing to be in uniforms or else they’d be called spies. That probably only mattered when you were fighting in another country, not against terrorists.
“Good morning,” Rowley said a little sharply. Aubrey thought they’d come on time, but he didn’t seem happy with them.
“Sergeant Eschler has our briefing this morning.” The captain gestured to the other man.
“Thanks,” Eschler said, and rolled out a map on the table. Everyone moved in a few steps.
“We have received intel that a terrorist cell in the area is planning on hitting the Space Needle today.”
“The Space Needle?” Jack asked. “Isn’t that just a restaurant?”
“It’s a landmark,” Eschler said. “A few landmarks were hit yesterday: the St. Louis Arch, Old Faithful, a couple others. It seems like they hit similar targets all at the same time, or within a couple days of each other.”
“It’s more than just a landmark,” Captain Rowley added crossly. “It’s six hundred feet of concrete and steel that could collapse in the center of Seattle.”
Eschler nodded. “We don’t know where the attack is going to come from. There is a terrorist cell working in Seattle that has some kind of superheated power that can be used to melt steel. Or there’s another group that has a kind of jackhammer effect. We’re not sure how that one works. It could be them, or it could be something else entirely. Or it could be all of them working together.
“The plan that we’ve worked up is simple, but it ought to be effective. We’ll have snipers in place in three areas—on the Children’s Museum, the Pacific Science Center, and this business complex on Broad Street. The remaining three of us will be an assault and command team located in the music museum. Our Lambdas will be filling similar roles to what they trained for. Parsons, you’ll go dark up by the Needle and watch for anything and everything. Cooper, we’ll have you near the music museum with us. We’ll have eyes on target, but I want you listening in on every conversation and every creak that thing makes when it sways in the wind.”
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