by K. M. Ruiz
“Fuck.” Jason leaned closer to the vidscreen and everything that was showing up. “Matron, the military scrambled their jets earlier than expected.”
“Shit,” Matron said as she accessed the uplink again, getting a chatter of voices coming from all the shuttles. “Crew, this is your boss. We’re detouring for the main cargo. Get the fuck out of this airspace. We’ve got incoming, out.”
She kept the connection open, the chatter filling the flight deck to replace the sound of their breathing. Jason was focused on his half of the controls, and Matron was struggling to fly the shuttle through the derecho, forced lower than she would have liked by heavy downdrafts and the thick cloud cover that made it almost impossible to see. The shuttle cut through the storm.
“Never fucking doing him a favor again,” Matron decided as she held tight to the stick with both hands and felt the drag of the shuttle in her arms.
The storm wreaked havoc on their instrumentation, giving them hope that it was interfering with the military’s as well. They couldn’t be sure, and the military had better stealth capabilities than Matron and her scavengers had been able to salvage from the deserted cities of America. What the military didn’t have sitting in the cockpits of those jets were psions.
The storm dragged them off course for a precious few minutes. Matron struggled to guide them back in the proper direction. They were almost to their destination when a red warning line filled the bottom of every active vidscreen.
“They’ve got a lock on us,” Jason snapped.
“I see it, I see it!” Matron said, one eye on the red warning cutting across her controls and another on the sky outside the shuttle. She yanked hard on the stick, maneuvering the shuttle into a sharp dive out of the clouds to clear, if rough, skies below.
They were uncomfortably close to the ground, flying over tenements and near-empty streets. A heat-seeking missile, locked onto them, came streaking out of the storm clouds. Jason saw it, on the screen and in the air, and he reached out with his telekinesis, struggling to wrap his power around the fast-moving weapon. He finally caught hold of it. Anchoring his power to that long, dangerous missile, Jason wrenched it around onto a new trajectory.
The military jet that dove out of the clouds could pull all the evasive maneuvers it wanted. That missile was backed by living human thought, not a computer, and Jason sent it straight into the belly of the jet as it rolled. He let go at the very last second so his power didn’t block the explosion.
The jet fell in fiery pieces to the city below. Jason didn’t have time to worry about the damage the debris would cause. Five more jets were dropping out of the clouds and coming straight at them, requiring his attention, firing a volley of missiles that he didn’t have time to grab for independently. Jason erected a wide telekinetic shield between them and the missiles, watching as they exploded in midair. A headache blossomed in the back of his head, but he ignored it.
Some of the jets managed to bank fast enough to get out of the way. Some of them didn’t, their technology incapable of identifying a telekinetic shield. Most crashed at full throttle into Jason’s shields. Jason was thrown forward against his flight harness, a physical reaction to the sudden mental agony ripping through his mind. He dropped his shields, gasping for air as his entire head throbbed from the impact of jets against his power.
“You still with me, Jason?” Matron snapped at him, her harsh voice cutting through the painful ringing in his ears.
“Yeah,” he ground out, forcing his eyes open. Jason scanned the sky and the shuttle’s instrumentation, searching out those last few jets.
They popped back up on radar, coming from behind. Jason focused on the rearview camera feed to guide his telekinesis. It hurt, but he ground his teeth against the pain as he telekinetically ripped the wings right off the fighter jets. They fell to earth, no longer a problem.
Matron let out a breath and guided their shuttle ever lower as the jets disappeared from the radar. So did several of the dots that were identified as transport shuttles, caught in the cross fire of enemy missiles. She tried not to watch the numbers dwindle.
“There,” Matron said. “Down below. Finally.”
Jason opened his eyes, squinting through the brightness as he realized that the open space Matron was aiming for surrounded a large power plant with steam blowing out of the single cooling tower. Bodies were scattered on the ground, some wearing uniforms that Jason recognized all too easily. Matron landed the shuttle close to the broken doors, the vertical landing sending hard vibrations through the shuttle. Jason wrapped a telekinetic shield around the shuttle even as he undid the straps of his flight harness.
“Stay here,” he ordered tiredly as he steeled himself for a teleport. Jason arrived near the first set of doors by the security walls and erected a telekinetic shield around himself for protection as he quickly scanned the area.
He didn’t know if those lying on the ground were dead or alive and couldn’t care. Moving forward, Jason climbed over the downed doors. He was halfway to the power plant’s main entrance when someone exited the building. Kerr was a familiar and welcoming sight. Jason was damned glad to see his partner walking on his own two feet, but he could have done without the person that Kerr was helping outside.
Samantha Serca had one arm slung over Kerr’s shoulder, limping along beside the other telepath. Jason wrapped a telekinetic shield around the pair as he hurried as fast as he could through the wind to reach them.
“You’re who Lucas needed?” Jason asked in a disbelieving voice.
Samantha’s face was covered in blood from the nose down, her dark blue eyes half-lidded and full of pain. “Fuck you,” she slurred.
“The others are inside,” Kerr said, jerking his head back the way they’d come, expression strained. “The shuttle?”
“Out front. Hold on.”
Jason wrapped his power around them, pictured the shuttle’s cargo bay in his mind, and teleported the pair inside the safety of the shuttle. He continued forward, using his power to wrench the second set of blast doors open wider, despite the throbbing in his skull. He swallowed thickly in fear once he got a good look at the group huddled just inside the power plant.
Quinton’s arms were a mess, broken to fleshy pulp, white bone sticking out of his skin. His face wasn’t much better, but he didn’t seem to notice, kneeling as he was beside where Lucas was sitting with Threnody’s mostly burned body in his arms. Standing over them was someone Jason had never even known existed. The girl smiled at him, the rictus look pulling at the skin of her face.
“Calvary has arrived,” she announced cheerfully, throwing her arms up into the air victoriously.
“Shut up, Kris,” Lucas said as he dragged open his eyes.
Jason stared in shock at the girl’s gleaming dark blue eyes, the eerie resemblance she had to Lucas. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “There’s four of you fucking Serca kids?”
Lucas glared at him. “Get us to the shuttle, Jason.”
He didn’t need to be told twice.
Jason teleported them into the shuttle’s cargo bay, where Kerr had already strapped Samantha into one of the seats, the girl fully unconscious now.
“Your sister’s mind is a broken mess, Lucas,” Kerr said, not looking up from where he was administering a sedative to Samantha, the hypospray pulled from their first-aid supplies, along with a portable IV that he strapped to her arm.
Lucas shrugged minutely. “She’ll live. She’s used to it.”
“Matron, get us the fuck out of here,” Jason yelled through the open hatch. “What the hell happened, Lucas?”
“Kris, help Quinton strap into a seat. Kerr, you’ve got another patient,” Lucas ordered even as he telekinetically hauled a supply trunk over to his side and began to dig through it. “Threnody’s alive, but not for much longer.”
“I’m not leaving her side,” Quinton said.
“I don’t need you yet,” Lucas said bluntly. “And you’re useless to her right now
, so stop arguing. Let Kerr see to your arms and face.”
Quinton wouldn’t move, so Kristen did it for him. The empath touched his arm above the elbow and altered the emotional blocks she’d implanted in his mind, just enough to remind him of the agony his body was keeping from his brain. Quinton’s knees buckled and the only reason why he didn’t collapse face-first to the deck was because Jason caught him in time.
“Fucking hell,” Jason said as he hauled Quinton over to the nearest seat, refusing to let that crazy empath within reach of either of them.
Quinton tried to fight him, but the pain blocks were gone and there was no moving if a telekinetic didn’t want you to move. Jason strapped him down and left him to Kerr’s tender mercies even as Matron took them into the air again. Jason telekinetically anchored himself to the deck so that he didn’t go slamming into the side of the shuttle. He kept Kerr upright as well. Lucas wasn’t moving, neither was Kristen, the pair of them anchored around Threnody’s too still body. But he could see her chest moving, albeit out of rhythm and far, far too slowly.
“What happened?” Jason asked again.
“She jump-started the electrical grid before the power plant came online,” Lucas said without looking up from whatever he was doing. “She was the only one who could.”
Because she was the only electrokinetic they had in their group. Jason swallowed, not sure how she could still be alive after that stunt. So much of Threnody’s skin was bubbled up red and black, following the lines of her damaged nervous system beneath her uniform like burned circuitry.
“I’m keeping her alive, but just barely,” Lucas said even as he ripped the sterile plastic off a med-kit item and withdrew a hypospray full of viscous gray matter. “Her mind wants to shut down.”
“Is it my turn?” Kristen asked, tugging on the sleeve of Lucas’s shirt. “Is it?”
The shuttle gave another violent shake as Matron guided them back into the storm, everyone in the cargo bay held steady by telekinetic anchors. Lucas looked at where Jason was standing over them and held up the hypospray for him to see.
“You’re the only one that can save her,” Lucas said, dark blue eyes bloodshot in a too pale face, blood dripping out of his nose, trickling from his ears.
“I’m not a medic,” Jason said.
“Shut up and listen to me. You’re a microtelekinetic behind those shields of yours. At minimum, a Class I psion. Your power has the potential to work on the atomic level. This hypospray holds a regulated amount of nanites that I stole sixteen months ago. We don’t have a biotank on this shuttle, which means you’re going to have to be the driving force behind getting this stuff to work on Threnody.”
Jason stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
“You will soon enough. Kris?”
Lucas’s sister perked up. “Finally.”
The empath reached for Jason, but he shoved her away telekinetically. Kristen stuck her tongue out at him. “Don’t touch me,” he said hoarsely. “Lucas—what the hell?”
Lucas reached out with his own shaky telekinesis, dragging Jason close enough for him to look the other man straight in the eye.
“Listen to me, you fucking selfish piece of shit,” Lucas snarled. “Threnody still has a part to play. If she dies here, then it was all for nothing. Everything I’ve given up and risked—it’s all worth nothing if she dies, do you understand? You’re no one’s messiah, Jason. You’re just a weapon, and I’m taking the safety switch off of you. You’re the only one who can save her, and Kris is the only one who can break through your shields. We don’t have time for this bullshit!”
Behind them, Quinton said, “Jason. Please.”
In the end, it didn’t come down to Lucas ordering him or Quinton begging him. It came down to Jason owing them all as much as they owed him. Loyalty could be bought and it could be sold, but the only kind that mattered was the sort gained by way of blood.
Kristen’s hands, when she touched him, were cold.
Her mind, as it entered his, was not.
“You taste so good,” she whispered into his ear as her empathic power started to eat through Jason’s thick natal shields.
Jason screamed with the first bite she took out of his defenses and didn’t stop for a long, long time.
[THIRTY-FOUR]
AUGUST 2379
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
The last cartel drug lord—mindwiped to within a synapse of a new personality—was escorted out of Nathan’s office in a city tower of Brasília. Nathan leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes against the pain of too many psi surgeries in too short a time. Promises were easily broken and wiped away, but it had taken more effort than he would have liked. He’d had to hunt through old memories and thoughts for every last person who could possibly have been involved in holding oil stolen from the government for the Warhounds. The cartels had been useful, and still were, but Nathan had never intended to give them berths on the Ark.
Removing every last shred of detail about the Serca Syndicate had taken a toll on him. Coming off the delicate psi surgery he had performed on Elion, adding in all the ones he’d done in Brasília, Nathan knew he had probably lost another year or two of life. Not exactly what he wanted, but so long as he lived to see Mars, these instances when he relied on himself and not his children would continue to happen.
Nathan opened his eyes and got to his feet, the night sky outside the windows dark. The door to the office opened again and Dalia walked in, still in her identity as an executive assistant.
“The shuttle is ready,” she told him, hands clasped behind her back.
“We’re done here,” Nathan said.
They took the human way to the landing docks that lined the length of the city tower, walking out of the Serca Syndicate branch with a group of Warhounds that doubled as bodyguards to human eyes. Nathan didn’t bother to hide his departure, even if he had hidden the arrival and departure of the cartel lords. He was known as a hands-on CEO, which meant surprise visits were inflicted on his subordinants.
When they came to the docking area, the computer guided them down the walkway to the correct shuttle, where their pilot was waiting. Teleportation would have been quicker; however, it wasn’t an option at the moment. Nathan hated the veneer of humanity he had to keep up at all times, to pretend to be something he wasn’t, but the survival of his company required it.
It also required that he have a successor, a position that never seemed to stay filled.
Sir, a telepathic voice said sometime later into his mind when they were halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, heading for London. He recognized Victoria’s psi signature immediately. We have a problem.
What now?
The report was dumped straight into his public mind, the woman’s tension making her thoughts sharp-edged. Nathan jerked up straight in his seat as he realized what had happened.
“Sir?” Dalia asked.
Nathan ignored her, teleporting straight out of the shuttle and into the tense atmosphere of the Warhounds’ command center at the top of a city tower, ignoring the warning twinge in his mind from the effort. Nathan had been receiving field reports over the past few hours, but the emergency evacuation was just starting. The wounded coming off the field required Victoria’s specialized skills in the arrival room used for teleportation. That’s where Nathan found her working on his son. Victoria looked up at Nathan from where she was kneeling on the floor, both hands cupped over Gideon’s temples.
“They found him in the power plant,” Victoria said as medics worked to stabilize Gideon’s vitals, a hover-gurney waiting close by to transport him to medical.
Retrieval teams were bringing back the living and the dead. Nathan’s gaze swept the large arrival room with cold precision. Everything must have gone straight to hell and worse in Buffalo in a short time, otherwise he would have been informed earlier of the problem. Nathan cataloged the dead, his eyes coming to rest at last on a charred husk of a human-shaped body, the only thing identifiab
le about it.
Victoria noticed where he was staring. “Jin Li,” she said quietly, looking away. “A nurse ID’d him through a biometrics scan using dental records. There wasn’t enough viable tissue left for the process.”
This was not how Nathan thought he would lose his best soldier.
His rage coated every thought that crossed his mind as he stepped closer to his one remaining son. Nathan wasn’t gentle as he slid his mind past Victoria’s and into Gideon’s, into those of all the Warhounds that had returned to headquarters. He wanted—required—answers.
Samantha and Kristen were not in any of the returning groups. Warhound coming back knew where they were and reported such to Nathan’s demands. Only when Nathan pried open Gideon’s damaged mind did he find the answers he was missing.
She did this to me, she did this to me was the repeating, wounded mantra that spun through Gideon’s thoughts, a memory of Samantha’s betrayal of the Syndicate, of her twin, the most prominent thing in his mind.
Nathan did not take the betrayal well.
As Nathan retreated out of the mind of the only child left to him, he felt the mental grid bend in a way it never before had, a precursor to something terrible. He instantly raised his shields, as did every psion in the Warhound ranks. Everyone felt the novalike explosion that ripped through the mental grid. Such power was in that blast, a psionic strength that Nathan had never before encountered, that it scorched across every psion’s mind the world over. A person he hadn’t known existed—and somehow Lucas must have known.
You deceiving little bastard, Nathan thought, something that resembled disgusted awe coursing through his mind as he reached out with his telepathy, struggling to follow that stranger’s mind back to its core. You knew this power existed, didn’t you, Lucas?
The mind winked out on the mental grid before he could reach it, sucked back into a hole that was impossible to find, no matter how hard he searched. Nathan eventually drew back his power, raising all his formidable mental shields once again. He doubted that unknown psion was dead. Lucas took after Nathan too much, whether he liked to admit it or not, and Lucas never took a risk unless he knew he would win. Losing had never been an option for Nathan’s eldest child.