by K. M. Ruiz
“Do I even want to know?” Keiko asked.
“It’s a nuclear bomb,” Lucas said, opening his eyes. “Hard to believe our ancestors could make them so small, but they seemed to excel at destruction on many different levels.”
Everyone except Lucas, Threnody, and Kerr shoved themselves away from the table and put their backs against the wall.
“Holy shit, are you insane?” Jason snarled.
Threnody dropped her hand away from the case and looked over her shoulder at Quinton. “Sit down. It hasn’t been activated yet.”
“We wouldn’t be alive if it were activated,” Quinton felt the need to point out.
“Do you think I would have agreed to this if I thought there was any other way?”
The two stared at each other, becoming the center of everyone’s attention. Quinton shook his head in denial, a pleading look filling his face. “Thren, this is—we can’t do this. It makes us no better than the people who started the Border Wars.”
“How is that any different than the one we’d be heading into if Nathan gets all his Warhounds into space?” Threnody asked quietly. “Nathan’s people will return wanting what we’re trying to rebuild and we’ll be left repeating history. The old countries fought for their fair share, so how is this different?”
“Because it’s wrong.”
“And I’m not saying it’s right. I’m saying it’s our only option.”
For a moment, no one moved. Then Quinton took a step forward, heels dragging against the floor. With jerky motions, he pushed his chair closer to the table and sat back down.
Slowly, everyone else did the same.
[THIRTY-EIGHT]
SEPTEMBER 2379
TORONTO, CANADA
Samantha’s feet hit the floor of the Strykers’ arrival room in the medical level with a heavy thud, Kristen landing right beside her out of the teleport. The empath smiled widely at her brother.
“It’s a madhouse back there,” Kristen reported cheerfully.
“I know,” Lucas said. “It’s almost as bad here.”
Samantha dropped the bag she carried on the arrival platform before stepping off, eyeing her brother. “Why are you wearing that?”
Lucas tugged at the collar of the Stryker uniform he wore over his insulated skinsuit. “Easier to tell Strykers apart from Warhounds and humans if we’re wearing a uniform. I doubt Nathan is going to have his people in field uniforms when they board those space shuttles.”
“Which means they’ll just find it easier to target us.”
“The Strykers are used to the risks that come with this uniform. What Warhounds remain on Earth will stand their ground. Nathan won’t back down from this fight.”
Samantha curled her lip at his attire. “I suppose you’ll want us to wear it as well.”
“You aren’t an exception anymore, Sam.” Lucas gestured at them to follow him. “Let’s go.”
He led them to a decontamination room, where he waited while they washed off any lingering taint of radiation. They had ditched the skinsuits in the generator room back in Paris, but this was standard protocol when returning from a deadzone.
When they were clean and wearing a new set of skinsuits and uniforms, Samantha and Kristen met with Lucas out in the busy hallway. Samantha tapped a finger to her temple, damp blond hair sticking to her skin. “I’ve got what you need for Paris.”
Lucas pulled her into a psi link and let Samantha dump the information straight into his mind. It was already mentally sorted, information practically choking his thoughts. Grimacing, Lucas pressed a hand to his forehead. “Nathan isn’t in Paris yet?”
“He’s scheduled to arrive tomorrow,” Samantha said. “He’s busy hailing himself as the only one who can replace the World Court, and people are listening, judging by the conversations we overheard. Did you kill them?”
“No. He did.”
“The world press is blaming psions for their murders.”
“Of course they would. Better the monsters they know than the ones they don’t.”
Samantha covered her mouth, yawning. “You have the security information. What else do you want from me and Kristen?”
“For you to get some rest,” Lucas said. “I’ll find you in a few hours. I need both of you clearheaded for what’s going to happen next.”
“I don’t know the layout of this Syndicate. Where are we sleeping?”
The two were abruptly teleported into a room that looked to house four people at a time, but was currently unoccupied. The beds looked as if no one had slept in them in a while.
Sleep, Lucas said into their minds. When you wake up, I’ll brief you.
Samantha didn’t feel like arguing, even if Kristen did. She pushed the younger girl to the lower bunk on one side of the room. “Listen to him,” Samantha said firmly. “Close your eyes and sleep.”
Kristen shrugged and curled up in a ball on the bed, promptly dozing off. Samantha didn’t remember her head touching the pillow. She knew she must have slept, but the hand on her shoulder that pulled her back to consciousness sometime later was unwelcome.
“I could still sleep,” Samantha grumbled.
“We all could,” Lucas said. “Get up. Your shuttle is scheduled to depart soon.”
Samantha sat up slowly, careful not to knock her head on the bunk above. Kristen was already awake and seated cross-legged on the other bed, eating her way through a ration bar. Samantha took the handful that Lucas offered her, all of them already torn open. She ate them mindlessly.
What’s the plan? she asked.
I’m sending you and Kris to London. Lucas bent his head so he could look her in the eye. Not to the Serca Syndicate, but to the outer city zones. You’ll be traveling with most of the telepaths here, and others will meet with you in London. Jael is already there, getting things sorted.
Samantha kept chewing. Why am I not going with you to Paris?
Because London is closer than Toronto for what I need from you and the Strykers. They don’t know how to merge, Sam. Keiko is the only one I had the time to teach, and her understanding of it is shaky at best, but I need her in Paris with the telekinetics.
I’m perfectly capable of watching my own back in the field.
I know you are, but the merge I’m asking you to help hold together is too massive for you to concentrate on anything else. You’ll be a liability in the field.
If that’s the case, why are you leaving Kristen with me?
She won’t be in the merge. Lucas nodded in Kristen’s direction. Her job is different.
If I’m handling the merge, then what is she doing?
“I’m making sure Lucas doesn’t feel a thing,” Kristen said, her manic glee tempered by her brother’s desire to see this through to the end.
Samantha cleared her throat. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Lucas.”
“This isn’t how I thought we’d finish it, but I’m not going to argue how we’re choosing to fight. It’s something Nathan never understood,” Lucas said.
“What? How you saw the world?”
Lucas shook his head. “Choice. Marcheline showed me that, Sam. I didn’t care for her programming or Nathan’s, but at least she showed me what it meant to control my own mind.”
“What about my choice?”
“Do you really need one?”
She didn’t have to think about her answer. “No.”
Lucas smoothed back her hair with one hand. His mind tangled against the edge of hers and something resonated deep in her thoughts. She couldn’t find its origins, but a part of her would always wonder if the answer came from herself or from Lucas’s subtle, subversive mindwipe. Samantha supposed she would never know.
“Nathan never believed in humanity. Humans make their own mistakes and he despised them for that. Like everyone else in our family, he felt he was above them. That he deserved better,” Lucas said. “We can’t blame humanity for their errors when they made us through their faults.”
; “Is this how you save them? Through some preemptive strike?”
“It doesn’t matter how I save them, just that I do.”
Samantha leaned away from his touch, picking up her last ration bar. She didn’t look at him when she said, “You told me to trust you. To follow you. I should hate you, but I don’t. I think that’s all you, but I’ll follow your orders if that’s what you need from me.”
“It is.” Lucas straightened up. “Your shuttle is getting prepped. Let’s get you to it.”
They walked instead of teleporting, needing to conserve their strength. Lucas led them to a lift that took them four levels down to one of the enclosed walkways. It connected to the landing docks, which protruded from the sides of the city tower. A large group of Strykers was already boarding. Most of them looked back warily at the three Serca siblings who approached. The only ones who didn’t were Threnody and Kerr.
“You’re flying with us dressed like that?” Samantha asked them.
Both Threnody and Kerr wore expensive outfits over skinsuits. They looked strange out of uniform or the grimy clothes of the street that they’d worn all their lives.
“We’re being dropped off at one of the city towers in London,” Threnody said. “Jason hacked our names into a passenger manifest using the information you brought back from the Command Center. We’ll be flying into Paris with registered humans, so we need to look the part.”
Between Threnody and Kerr sat a heavy-looking carrying case and two bags that looked as if they held clothes. Kerr leaned down to grab the handle on his side of their cargo. “See you on board.”
The two followed the rest of the Strykers onto the shuttle. A quick scan showed Samantha that the majority of the Strykers traveling with them were telepaths, but quite a few telekinetics, pyrokinetics, and electrokinetics were in the mix as well.
Psychometrists and most of the empaths won’t be accessing the mental grid, Lucas said. We’ve ordered them into field positions to coordinate Stryker movements across the continents. I’ve allocated some ’kinetic-oriented psions for defense, so you’ll be protected.
You’re putting a lot of trust in psions who hate us.
They know what’s at risk. Now do your job.
Lucas walked away, leaving Samantha and Kristen alone to face down people who were once their enemies. The two boarded the shuttle last, strapping into seats near the front next to Threnody and Kerr. The shuttle wasn’t built with luxury in mind, geared more toward transporting large groups of people. The seats weren’t all that comfortable, but they settled as best they could. Samantha wrapped her hand around Kristen’s wrist and closed her eyes as the shuttle unlocked from the anchoring arms of the docking cradle.
Close your eyes, Samantha told her sister. Rest your mind.
They slept on the flight to London, only waking when the pilot announced over the comm system that they were descending into a city tower. Samantha opened her eyes and yawned, trying to wake up. Kristen hadn’t changed position at all during the flight over, though she was no longer sleeping, even if her eyes were closed.
Samantha turned her head to look at Kerr. “See if you can’t mindwipe your pilot into landing in the rear of the launch area, behind the Command Center. It’s the area with the least amount of security feeds, though that’s not saying much.”
Kerr nodded as the shuttle locked into a docking cradle with a heavy shudder. “We’ll take that under consideration.”
He and Threnody were the only ones to disembark, leaving the confines of the shuttle with the carrying case held between them. Samantha watched them leave until they were out of sight. The hatch closed again and ten minutes later the shuttle got the all clear to depart.
Whatever hack Jason was able to perform, it must have been good. They weren’t challenged at any point during their flight across London. When the shuttle finally landed with a heavy shake on the cleared street, everyone undid their harnesses and got to their feet. The group disembarked in an orderly fashion, with Samantha pulling Kristen after her. Jael greeted them outside in the street.
“Can’t say I’m happy about this,” Jael said as the pair stepped off the shuttle.
“Considering what’s going to happen, no one really should be,” Samantha said as she studied their location.
The Strykers had taken over a single block of tenements in an outer city zone. It was night and the streets weren’t lit. The building they were working out of had light escaping around the edges of badly boarded-up windows. A quick scan of the place told Samantha no humans were in the area. A lot of psions were, however, and she frowned at the way all those Stryker minds pinged on the mental grid.
“Right, first thing I’m doing is teaching you lot how to read like humans on the mental grid,” Samantha said. “We don’t need to be advertising our presence to the Warhounds still here.”
“Lucas said all the telepaths involved in this merging venture aren’t to exhaust themselves,” Jael said as she gestured for the two younger girls to follow her.
“This trick of the mind is fairly simple and needs to be done if we’re to stay safe.”
“We’re using the street as an arrival area for those telekinetics in Paris and the ones nearby to pull the wounded out of the way. We’ve got ’kinetic-oriented psions guarding the area along with empaths and psychometrists. We’ll be safe.”
“Against a city dead set on burning itself to the ground?” Samantha shook her head as they walked into a musty-smelling building. “No, we can’t take any chances.”
“The riots won’t reach here. We won’t let them.”
Samantha still retained her uneasiness. Blinking her eyes to adjust to the bright interior, she took in the space that was their safe house for the time being. Strykers wearing the white scrubs of doctors and psi surgeons milled around inside, handing out bunks for the telepaths assigned to London. Samantha declined a bed or couch, not liking the looks of the ones she passed, and instead took up position in the kitchen. She and Kristen claimed a small table with four chairs. Kristen immediately folded her arms over the tabletop and rested her head on them, body canted at a sharp angle.
She gave her sister a sharp smile before closing her eyes. “It’ll be brilliant, Sammy-girl.”
Samantha sat down under Jael’s watchful eye, not protesting when a nurse started to hook her up to a monitoring machine. “Remember your orders, Kristen.”
“Don’t worry. Lucas won’t feel a thing.”
PART EIGHT
ASCENSION
SESSION DATE: 2128.02.17
LOCATION: Institute of Psionics Research
CLEARANCE ID: Dr. Amy Bennett
SUBJECT: 2581
FILE NUMBER: 160
“Should we fear you?” the doctor asks.
The child shrugs and picks at the lace on her white sock. She is kneeling on the chair and hooks a finger beneath the strap of one shiny black shoe as she stares around the room. “I think you already do.”
“This is only a precaution. Do you consider yourself dangerous, Aisling?”
She wrinkles her nose at the doctor. “I’m four.”
“You don’t act it sometimes.”
Aisling shrugs again and settles more comfortably on the chair, her feet swinging freely through the air after she shifts position. “I can’t help that. I can’t help what I see.”
The woman settles a hand over her datapad, leans forward, and offers up a smile. It doesn’t reach her eyes, barely curls her lips. “You’re the first person we’ve found who has a one hundred percent accuracy rating. We need that. We need you.”
Aisling tilts her head to the side, the way any inquisitive child would. “You don’t need me, you need my dreams. But they aren’t for you.”
[THIRTY-NINE]
SEPTEMBER 2379
PARIS, FRANCE
Nathan was in the launch command room, in the middle of a conversation with the head of operations, when the security grid around Paris pinged with numerous threats. The ch
atter in the command room picked up, growing louder with every second that passed.
“Those aren’t confirmed routes.”
“Sir, no one is answering our hails.”
“Someone get those jets scrambled!”
Nathan took one look at the targeted mass of dots drifting closer to the ruined city on the hologrid map before abruptly turning on his feet and leaving the room. The hallway that separated the command room from the rest of the boarding facilities of the building was filled only with scattered government employees. It wasn’t private, but it was empty enough for what he needed to do.
The four Warhounds masquerading as soldiers in a quad followed him out and stood guard when Nathan put his back against the wall. He closed his eyes and sent his mind skimming across the mental grid, picking up Warhound telepaths and dragging them into a merge. Bolstered by external power, Nathan allowed himself to reach for the cluster of buzzing thoughts that were getting closer with every second that passed. A morass of psi signatures hit his leading mental shields, and Nathan abruptly pulled back, retreating in a way that snapped pain through his head when he opened his eyes.
“Sir?” the Warhound to his left asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Confirm the numbers we have on-site for Warhounds,” Nathan said in a low voice.
“The last groups are still flying in. They number a little over one hundred. On-site? We’ve got two hundred Warhounds still waiting to board and about fifty already on their assigned space shuttles. Everyone else is already en route to the Ark or on board the colony ship.”
Nathan calculated the odds. Three hundred of his Warhounds, half of them higher-Classed psions, were already in space and unavailable for this fight. Nathan had staggered the exits of Warhound teams, knowing that things would be going to hell during such a shortened transfer time frame. He ground his teeth, exhaling sharply through his nose as he picked through his options.
“Get them off those space shuttles and out of this building. I want them on the streets and ready to fight right now. That’s Lucas flying in with Strykers and we need to be ready.” Nathan gestured at the hallway they were in. “Send me all the Class VI and higher telepaths and empaths we have on-site. Tell them to prepare for merging.”