A minute later, Tom followed Spike back into the chamber. He crouched next to me and checked for Summer’s pulse. Of course he didn’t find one, and he enfolded me into his arms in what should have been our shared grief. I couldn’t feel his any more than I could feel mine.
“I’ll take care of her,” Tom told me. “You go do what you have to do.”
I rose to my feet and thanked him, then took Spike around the outside of the building to where Adam was still encased in the stasis beams. I didn’t know why Charles hadn’t taken him with him, but figured he couldn’t move the beams by himself any more than we could, and he couldn’t risk Adam getting free.
“What are you doing here?” I finally thought to ask my brother as we strode across the lawn.
Spike pointed overhead. I noticed news helicopters for the first time.
“Mom must be freaking.”
“That’s why I’m here.” He looked grim. “She saw the fight on the front steps and called me, swearing she was watching you get killed right before her eyes. I couldn’t get here fast enough.”
“You’re here now.” We stopped outside the triangle. “Can you—”
He didn’t let me finish, just stepped in front of one of the beams before I could tell him it was going to fry him. But just like with the stun gun, the beam went sideways, fizzling out at the edges of an oval as tall and wide as Spike’s body. Adam collapsed to the ground behind Spike and rolled. I wanted to go to him but the other two beams were now extending further than we could see.
“I’m free,” Adam croaked, and Spike moved away.
When the three beams met in the middle of the triangle, they seemed to backflash into the machines, which exploded simultaneously. I held up my gloved hands against the blinding light and flying bits. A moment later, the clearing was dim again, and Spike helped Adam to his feet.
I walked over and stood in front of Adam, unsure what to say. How could I tell him about Summer?
It turned out I didn’t have to. He wrapped his hands around my shoulders and looked down at me. I didn’t need my powers to see his pain and compassion. It briefly crossed my mind that my loss might be a good thing. I’d be normal, and this could never happen again.
“I heard it all.” Adam’s fingers tightened and should have hurt, but I couldn’t feel that, either. “I heard everything.”
“Do you know where the others are?”
He shook his head. “Not exactly. Trace is out of range. Kirby got lured away, and I think she’s locked in somewhere. I lost Evan after he got arrested. And Summer . . .”
“Tom’s taking care of her.” I dreaded telling Evan. He’d lost so much in so short a time. I’d betrayed him, and I’d killed his sister.
Oh, God.
Adam held me while I heaved. How I could go from empty to full so quickly? All the emotions I knew I should have been feeling slammed into me. I let them spill over each other while my body tried to purge itself. A moment ago I’d accepted the numb emptiness as preferable to anything else. But as much as this hurt, ripping at my heart and leaving me bleeding, I was glad it had come back.
I sorted through the turmoil, picked the emotion that would serve me best—anger—and made it dominant. It would be temporary. All the others would have to have their due. But this one would subvert them for now and allow me to make Charles’ words true.
It would be over, but not on his terms. On ours.
“We need to get Kirby first,” I told Adam. “We’re going to need her on the computer to track down Auberginois. He thinks this is all he needs to do to shred us? He’s an egomaniacal idiot. Hopefully we can find Trace and he won’t have been torn apart by that robot.”
“Charles was targeting our strengths and trying to make them weaknesses.” Adam toed one of the shattered boxes. “This beam couldn’t penetrate my skin to harm me, but it could hold me. Trace’s endurance won’t last forever. I expect the robot was built to run indefinitely, not to fight.”
“I hope you’re right.” I turned to Spike. “Thank you for finding me. Helping me get Adam out. But Mom will kill me if I drag you into this.”
“I’m not leaving.” He looked grim and suddenly much older than eighteen. “You need me.” He folded his arms and glowered at me, ready to argue. But I wasn’t planning to do that.
“All right, just so you make sure Mom knows I tried to send you away. Let’s go get Kirby.”
We went back to the bar where our equipment was. I held my breath as we climbed the stairs, hoping it was still there. Technically, it was Charles’ equipment. He’d paid for it, no matter what he’d done afterward. So he could have taken it away.
But he hadn’t. I let out a long breath and went to the main computer as Spike whistled his appreciation and started prowling the room. The computer booted up, and I launched the tracking program. Our new suits had chips in the jackets and pants. I was sure Charles had been keeping tabs on us through them. He’d probably messed with the coms, too.
“If we’d left someone back here, or if this was on a laptop, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” Adam lamented.
“We couldn’t spare anyone,” I reminded him. “And Charles probably didn’t give us a laptop on purpose.”
“What’s its range?” Spike asked from across the room, where he was examining an extra glove. “This is sweet stuff.”
“I don’t know, but if it’s satellite-directed, it should be pretty far.” I watched the map redraw itself several times, then rest. On the left, our names were listed, each next to a different colored dot. The screen prompted me to select the bodies I wanted to track. I clicked the boxes next to Kirby, Trace, and Evan. A few seconds later green, red, and blue dots appeared on the map, which had redrawn to show several states. Evan was in DC, which we knew—he was likely in a holding cell. Kirby was in Maryland, just over the border from the city, and Trace was far south, in Virginia. And still moving.
“Why doesn’t he just stop?” Spike asked, leaning over my chair.
“No idea.” I scribbled coordinates on a pad and handed it to Adam. “I’m sure Charles set him up somehow. Maybe he got hooked to the robot or something.”
“Is he wearing a cell phone?”
We’d had the coms, so the phones hadn’t really been necessary. I grabbed the desk phone and dialed Trace anyway, but it went right to voice mail.
“Trace, it’s Daley. Everything is fucked up, you’ve got to come back. Forget about the . . . guy you’re chasing. We need you. We’re going after Kirby, so call my cell.”
“That program give you distance?” Adam asked, looking at a flat map and marking the coordinates I’d given him.
I hit a few keys. “Yeah, she’s about ten miles from us.”
“And Trace?”
“About thirty.”
Adam straightened. “He’d better get a ride back. Hope he’s got cash. Let’s go.” He grabbed a gear bag and headed out the door.
“Wait.” I looked around the room, hoping we had another suit. “Spike’s unprotected.”
“I don’t need—”
“Yes, you do! You can still get sliced with a knife, or injected by a needle or pressure syringe, or strangled.”
He held up his hand. “All right, all right.”
“I’ll give you mine in the car,” Adam said. “It won’t fit perfectly, but it will do the job. Daley, you drive.” He tossed me the keys, and we headed out.
A short time later, we parked on the street in a warehouse district, looking around.
“The coordinates weren’t specific enough,” Adam said.
Ya think? I kept it to myself, wishing again for a laptop so we could pinpoint the signal. She could be in one of four buildings, all large warehouse style. It was the middle of the afternoon, so they’d be full of people, and no doubt ha
d excellent security, as well.
“You’ll have to find her, Dale.” Adam’s voice was soft, understanding, but I could hear the undercurrent of steel. Like I had no choice.
I didn’t, but not the way he wanted. “I can’t see, Adam.”
“You have to.”
“It’s gone! He sucked it all out of me, and my powers are gone. Not that they did any good in the first place,” I muttered, sinking into my seat, trying to hold on to my anger and disgruntlement and not think about Summer, lying on the marble with her eyes wide open.
“He can’t have taken it, Daley, it’s a part of you. You just need to turn it on.”
So easy for him to say, Mr. Indestructible. My pulse fluttered at the base of my throat, which closed around the air I tried to draw in. My vision blackened around the edges. I couldn’t see anything, and we’d lose another team member because of it.
The driver’s door opened, and Adam turned me to face him.
“Look at me, Daley.” He said it loudly, hard, brooking no argument.
I could barely see his face. I locked on to his eyes, my breathing labored now, something pushing my chest in so I couldn’t fill my lungs.
“Daley, you’re having a panic attack. You’re fine. You can breathe fine. Close your mouth, and breathe deeply through your nose. Come on, sweetie, you can do it.” He put his hand over my mouth so I had no choice. His scent was sharp and tangy, and I automatically drew it in.
“Good. You’re getting it. Again.” He started to move his hand away.
I grabbed it and held his palm to my face, closing my eyes and concentrating only on the way he smelled. The blackness receded, leaving the golden-red of closed eyelids facing sunshine. Another breath, and the flutter in my throat calmed. I let his hand fall and inhaled through my mouth, opened my eyes, and nodded. “Thanks.”
He let me hold on to his hand, resting against my leg, as I studied the buildings around us. I could feel Spike’s hand on my back, silent support, and I felt foolish for letting myself fall apart.
I tried Adam first. Putting up and taking down blocks to people’s emotions had been second nature to me before. I’d think about it, and it would happen. Now it was hard work. I concentrated, feeling sweat pop on my forehead. Adam stared into my eyes, and I shook free, exasperated.
“That’s not going to work. I can’t get tuned in if there’s no one to tune into.” Maybe casting a wide net would be easier than one-on-one. I stepped into the street and stood, eyes closed again, trying to ease the auras back into my empathic vision. I didn’t concentrate too hard, forcing myself to let the colors seep into sight, not zeroing in on them until I was fully functional again. I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t gone.
Three of the buildings contained a large number of people. Some were stationary, spaced in rows, and I assumed they sat in cubicles. Others moved in straight lines and sharp corners, pausing occasionally, or clustered in groups. Those were probably warehouse areas. Though the mix of emotions was broad, I saw nothing out of the ordinary.
The fourth building, however, did not match the patterns of the other three. There were a few clusters of people, and the range of emotions was low—in other words, most of the people in there were feeling the same things. In one corner, I counted four people.
Including Kirby.
I had never recognized a person by aura before. Normally, I knew who they were before I saw the aura, or I didn’t know them at all. I couldn’t tell what made hers different from all the others. She had more fear, true, but that didn’t make it her. Rather, the blend manifested itself in a unique way that I recognized. I’d have been elated at my discovery if I wasn’t still beaten down by all the other, less positive things that had happened today.
“She’s in there.” I pointed to the building and opened my eyes.
The three of us studied what appeared to be a normal office/warehouse building.
“This corner here?” Adam pointed at corner nearest us. The one with no windows and no doors for the entire length and width of the building.
“Unfortunately.”
“Any ideas on how to get in?” Spike shaded his eyes against the glare of the lowering sun. “Maybe the roof?”
“That would be AC access,” Adam said, “and very noisy.”
“Front door, then?”
Adam nodded at Spike, then turned to me. “You stay here.”
I didn’t argue. My confidence was still reeling from its earlier blows. I watched them walk down the road, cross the parking lot, and open the main doors. Then I jumped into the truck and moved it closer, so we could get away as soon as they ran out. I debated pulling into the lot, but there was a spike rail at the entrance. Someone could trigger that from inside, and we’d blow all our tires getting out. I idled just out of the line of sight of the entryway, and waited. And waited.
After ten minutes had passed, I thought to check the auras again. Sure enough, I spotted Adam and Spike immediately, and marveled that I had never realized I could do this. Maybe it was because I’d been working on different ways to use it, or maybe it was because Charles had stripped it all out of me, forcing me to start over. How far it could go, how much more could I do?
That reminded me creepily of how Charles had tried to turn me, and I shoved it all to the side. While I “watched” Adam and Spike make their way through the building, they stopped a few times, probably hiding as people went by. They finally reached the corner where Kirby was. I saw multiple auras merging and separating, with two of them going horizontal. Kirby didn’t move, and I feared she’d been drugged or physically harmed, or maybe held in another stasis beam. While Spike took care of the last CASE person, Adam did something with Kirby, and the three of them started out of the building.
They did okay until they neared the exit. Four new figures approached them, and they paused. I hit my com, telling myself at this point it didn’t matter if Charles could listen in. But I got silence again. I flipped to person-to-person and keyed Adam’s code, which should give me Spike’s com. I blew out a relieved breath when I heard his voice. He was trying to convince whoever was confronting them that they were CASE and Hurley had told them to move Kirby.
I wasn’t sure I could help from here, but I thought I’d try. I conjured confusion and trust and sent them across the vast side lawn to the building, then enveloped the four people with it. I couldn’t tell if it was working—everything they said was muffled and didn’t come across the com clearly—but a moment later, the auras had moved aside and Adam, Spike, and Kirby hurried out.
I leaned to open the rear passenger door, then put the truck in gear as they appeared on the walkway. The two men ran, carrying a half-conscious Kirby, but no one followed. As soon as they hit the truck, I slammed my foot on the gas, roaring down the road and following the circle out of the industrial park.
My eyes met Adam’s in the rearview mirror. “Too easy?”
“Too easy.” He worked to get Kirby’s jacket off. “But maybe it was just unexpected. They think we’re all incapacitated. They were disappointed to be losing Kirby.”
“What did they do to her?” I reached the main entrance and turned right on red. I needed to go in the other direction but refused to sit at the light, vulnerable. I drove about half a mile, then turned around and headed back to the highway.
Eventually, Kirby spoke. “They just drugged me and knocked me around a bit.” Her words were slurred, but she sat up without support and didn’t appear to be in pain. “They were keeping me as insurance, in case Charles wanted to lure you again.”
“I wondered why he left me there.” I pressed down on the accelerator to merge onto the highway back to the city.
“Where are Trace and Evan and Summer?” Kirby asked, looking around the truck as if they might be hiding.
I used driving as an
excuse to say nothing, and my heart, which I’d thought destroyed already, cracked when I heard her soft sobbing after Adam gave her the news.
It’s my fault, I wanted to scream, but she’d know that. If she didn’t figure it out herself, she’d know eventually. I didn’t care what they did to me in the future, but I had to be part of this now. I had to help vanquish Charles.
“What next?” I asked Adam. “Trace?”
He nodded. “You think we should bail Evan out, too?”
I was a coward. “Not yet.”
Adam didn’t argue.
We went back to the bar and tracked Trace again. He was still moving south and apparently hadn’t received my message. It would take us hours to retrieve him, but we didn’t have much choice. We needed all the power we could get.
Adam drove this time. I sat in the back with Kirby, who drank and ate to rebuild her strength and purge the drugs from her system. I stared out the window, thinking. Adam would no doubt have a plan by the time we retrieved Trace and got back to the city. He’d modify it when we figured out where Charles was and how much of a fortress he’d surrounded himself with. But I had a feeling that would all be for naught. We couldn’t prevent the same kind of scenario from happening again. Sure, Spike could block the stasis beams, and we wouldn’t be on the defensive with no idea what we were facing. But Charles still had his powers and intimate knowledge of our weaknesses.
I didn’t think we stood a chance.
“We’re coming up on his position.”
Kirby had managed to transfer the software to her own laptop. That was the only way we’d be able to find him, since he was still on the move.
“We should have visual about . . .” She looked up and waited as we followed a curve in the road past a large building. “Now.”
And there he was. Running as effortlessly as if he’d just started, about eight feet behind a figure in a red jogging suit. Nothing to arouse suspicion from casual onlookers, except that Trace was wearing his gloves and flexi-shield in the middle of summer.
The Color of Courage Page 27