Empowered: Agent (The Empowered Series Book 1)

by Dale Ivan Smith

  “Mat, she’s dying,” Gus said as I turned onto Division.

  A police car flashed by, sirens wailing.

  “I know, I know,” I replied, my eyes fixed on the road. We stopped at the intersection with 39th, the pavement slick with rain.

  “What do we do?” Gus was panicking. Again.

  “I don’t know, Gus.”

  Keisha needed medical aid fast.

  We couldn’t take her to the ER or even an urgent care clinic. They’d figure out she was an Empowered and call the authorities. Then the police, Support, or worse, the Hero Council, would swoop down on her. I squeezed the steering wheel until my hands ached and leaned my aching head against the cool plastic. Think.

  My chance of doing this damn assignment and getting help for my family would be over. I’d be back in prison.

  And Keisha would be dead.

  There was no place to turn for help.

  Except an old contact from the Renegades. I lifted my head.

  Doctor Silverly.

  Professor Insight had called him our secret physician. The Professor loved his clever expressions. Back then, when one of us was badly injured or having trouble healing despite our power, the Professor would contact his old friend, Silverly. I don’t know what the Prof and the Doc had that bound them together, but Silverly would drop whatever he was doing to help if one of us were injured.

  But that had been five years ago. I didn’t know if Silverly was still in Portland, or if he were even alive.

  I turned right onto 39th, and drove faster.

  Gus must have sensed a change in my attitude.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  I was careful to keep at the speed limit even as I longed to floor it.

  “A place we can get her help.”

  Silverly’s place was a three-story house, sitting back from the street behind an ivy-covered brick wall. Must be nice to have that kind of money. I parked in the turnaround drive beneath a weeping willow. My hyper-attuned plant sense picked up the tree’s gentle murmurs and I let myself float in the sensation for a moment before jumping from the truck, sprinting to the big oak door, and banging the knocker.

  A light winked on above me in a third floor window. I knocked again, four more times, each time harder.

  The door opened, and Doctor Silverly peered up at me, silver hair tousled, silk bathrobe loose around him. He was barefoot.

  His eyes widened in recognition. “Mat? It’s you?”

  “Yeah, Doc, it’s me. I’m out of Special Corrections.”

  “I’m finished helping criminals, Mat.”

  “How do you know I’m a criminal, Doctor Silverly?”

  He raised his eyebrows, still black despite the rest of his hair having gone as silver as his name. “Really, Mat? You show up in the middle of the night with a wounded person in the truck bed, and you brought that person here rather than the ER?” He shook his head. “It’s all on camera.”

  My stomach twisted. Were the police already on their way? But Silverly didn’t seem afraid.

  “Cameras?”

  “Sure. My security system. I thought the driver looked familiar, but it was hard to tell. But the camera picked up a prone body accompanied by a kneeling figure in the back of your truck.”

  “That must be some security system.”

  “It is.”

  “My, uh, companion got impaled by a tree branch, and she’s lost a lot of blood.”

  “How did she get impaled?”

  “My fault. We got in a fight.”

  Silverly shook his head, suddenly looking a hundred years old. “Mat, I had hoped that if you ever were released from prison, you’d choose a different path.”

  Gee, thanks, Doc. Silverly had no idea what my life was like now. And it wasn’t like I could tell him I was actually an infiltrator for Support.

  “Doctor Silverly, she’ll die if you don’t help.”

  The indecision on his face vanished. “All right.” He disappeared inside the house, returned carrying a black medical bag, and followed me to the rear of the truck.

  I lowered the truck’s gate. Keisha lay on her back. She was no longer moaning, but her chest still rose and fell. Gus looked up from where he knelt beside her and wiped his eyes.

  “Gus, you remember the Doc.”

  “Hi, Doc.”

  Silverly nodded, scrambled up onto the truck’s gate without asking for help, spryer than I would have thought for a man who had to be past seventy. He crawled over to Keisha and began examining her. He unzipped his medical bag and I heard the hiss of a hypo.

  “Adrenalin,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Can you save her?” The words felt heavy in my mouth.

  “Not here.” Silverly put some sort of flexible bandage around the wound. “She needs a hospital.”

  “Yeah, but won’t they get suspicious.”

  He scooted out and jumped down, brushing at his bathrobe.

  “Not if we sneak her in the back way.”

  The gurney’s left front wheel vibrated loudly as I pushed it. Keisha lay under a space blanket, head elevated. My borrowed hospital scrubs were too tight.

  Gus walked beside me. Silverly had had one spare pair of scrubs and, incredibly, a gurney (I didn’t ask), so Gus was still dressed in his jacket, t-shirt and jeans, and tennis shoes. He was rubbing his hands nervously. We’d dropped the Doc at the front of the hospital. I’d wanted to keep him with us to help us get inside, but he insisted he had to go in separately and prep the room. Whatever. I smelled coward, but we were asking a lot of Silverly.

  We crossed the parking lot. I half expected police to suddenly surround us, guns drawn. That would complicate things royally. I kept rubbing my sweaty hands against my scrubs and glancing nervously at Keisha, unconscious on the gurney.

  My phone vibrated, three times. Stopped. I didn’t glance at it. When it began buzzing again a few moments later I knew it was Mutter. Wasn't gonna answer that, not now. I’d have to face the music eventually, but not now.

  Silverly had told us to meet him in Room 1C. But without him to talk our way past anyone we ran into, our chances sucked. Sure enough, just as we reached the side door, a security guard appeared.

  Gus jumped away from me. The little weasel was going to disappear and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. A second later he had vanished, blending into the shadowy parking lot.

  I swear, if Keisha lived I would kill Gus for leaving me in the lurch.

  The security guard strolled toward me. “Can I help you, orderly?” He was a large, dark skinned man, with a holstered pistol on his hip, what looked like a pepper spray canister, and handcuffs.

  I wore the generic badge Silverly had given me—the one you had to sign out for if you forgot your real one, he said. He kept that and the scrubs at home. He must still do some unauthorized medical work at the hospital. Lucky for Keisha.

  “This patient has experienced a trauma and blood loss.” I searched my memory for the right words.

  “Why didn’t you go in the front?”

  This was where things went south.

  I shifted my stance. Suspicion started to creep across his face.

  Gus appeared right in front of the guard.

  “Because I told her to come back here,” he said.

  The guard jumped back, yanking at his gun.

  Gus vanished again.

  “Shit, one of them!” The guard’s eyes were wide and he jerked around, looking for Gus.

  Think fast, Mat, I told myself. Keisha was dying.

  “Protect me, sir,” I said. The door was only twenty feet away. “Get us inside.”

  He nodded. “Go.” He drew his gun and assumed a firing stance, scanning around us. Thank God, the guard had reacted without thinking. Hopefully his adrenalin would keep him from doing that until after all this. I pushed the gurney up to the door, the guard backing up to cover me.

  A rock landed nearby and the guard pointed the gun where it landed.

/>   “He’s trying to draw you off!” I said. It wasn’t hard to put fear into my voice.

  I reached the building. The guard backed up next to me as I opened the door and pulled the gurney inside behind me.

  The guard followed, pulling out his radio. “Central, this is Kyle. We have a situation on the north end of the ER building, Door 3B.”

  In moments the place would be crawling with guards.

  The guard motioned down the narrow hallway. “Go ahead and take her to the ER. I’ll be right behind you.”

  I nodded and pushed the gurney down the hall. The gurney’s left wheel kept squealing in protest. I pushed past the intersection and the sign for ER that pointed left.

  “Hey, that’s not the way.” The guard’s shout made me jump.

  Gus was in between the guard and me, at the intersection. “Boo!” he shouted at the guard.

  What the hell? Gus was suddenly fearless.

  The guard pointed his gun at Gus. “Freeze!”

  “Careful. Miss me and you hit her,” Gus said. He vanished.

  Blending in with a brightly lit, white hospital corridor must have been hard for Gus to pull off. It was going to eat him up doing that. The guard ran toward me, skidding to a stop at the intersection. “Down here,” we heard Gus call from the direction of the ER.

  “Shit!” The guard lifted his radio. “Central, we have a rogue intruder, headed toward the ER. He ran down the corridor after Gus.

  Gus was being fearless. No, make that freaking crazy. I didn’t know what had gotten into him.

  I pushed the gurney onto another juncture. So far the intercom had remained silent. No other guards appeared. Yet.

  There it was. Room 1C. I pushed open the door.

  Silverly waited inside, beside banks of medical equipment. It was an operating room.

  “Security has been alerted,” I told him. “Gus is playing hide and seek, but things are going to get noisy real fast.”

  Silverly laid out scalpels on a tray, along with a hypo and motioned for me to bring the gurney over beside the operating table. “We aren’t going to move her.”

  “Did you hear me?” I demanded. Why wasn’t he more concerned?

  “I heard you.” He thought for a moment, nodded to himself and went to wall a phone. He was turning us in. I took a step toward him.

  He put a finger up to his lips, dialed a number. “I have one favor I had been saving.” He looked at me sourly. “This wasn’t how I wanted to spend it.”

  He talked into the phone. “Greg, its Rance. Sorry to bother you, but I need to call in that favor. Contact hospital security and tell them the present alert is a training exercise. Have the guard that made the initial call report to you. Have him give you a rundown.”

  Words from the other side I couldn’t make out.

  “Yes, I know. Now I owe you. Thanks.” Silverly hung up. He frowned at me, shook his head.

  “Hey, thanks for doing this,” I said.

  He lifted the sheet. Keisha’s bandages were wet with blood and my stomach lurched. The anger was gone from her face, she looked smaller somehow and so very vulnerable.

  “Steady, Mat,” Silverly told me.

  I swallowed bile. “I’ll be okay.” Focus, I told myself, but it was tough. A tree packed more power than I'd realized. My stomach was in knots and my shoulders felt like rocks.

  The room’s antiseptic smell made me want to gag. I wiped my mouth.

  Silverly cut away her shirt. I winced as the clotting blood made the shirt stick to Keisha’s skin. The bandages were soaked with it. I couldn’t watch.

  “Oxygen!” Silverly’s command focused me. Had to stay focused. Keisha depended on it

  I fitted the mask over Keisha, checked the airflow.

  He hung a plastic bag of blood on a pole, and inserted an IV into her arm, then gave her another shot of adrenalin and got to work.

  I kept my eyes on the readouts, passed him instruments when he asked. He really should have a nurse helping him. Hell, he should have a whole staff assisting instead of just me. But it was just me. So no way could I pass out. I forced myself to go numb, not feel anything, just be there, helping the Doc.

  “Mat?” His voice pulled at me. “I’m going to pull out the branch, be ready with bandages.

  I nodded stiffly.

  He lifted the limb. Blood oozed from the cavity and I pressed down the bandages.

  “Mat, Mat, not so hard.”

  He pushed my hand aside, got to work in the bloody cavity. I didn't look; I just focused on handing him whatever he asked for. Zombie me.

  After what seemed like forever, Silverly finished, pulled off his surgical gloves, and mopped his forehead. He looked so damn old, and tired.

  “Her accelerated healing along with your bringing her to me made the difference. She just needs rest now.” He leaned against a counter.

  My phone vibrated again. I let it vibrate.

  “Thank, you, Rance,” I said.

  He sighed. “Is this really not what it seems?”

  I nodded my head fractionally. “You could say that.”

  “Good, I’m very glad to hear that.” He put the instruments into an autoclave. “Life is too short to be spent making all the wrong choices.”

  I leaned over the gurney and watched Keisha’s breath rise and fall. I hoped Silverly was right.

  Chapter 13

  I found Gus waiting by the truck.

  The sun was almost up. I had caught a few snatches of sleep while Keisha recovered in a post-op room. Silverly had given her painkillers and a massive dose of antibiotics, telling me that would be the only dose she’d need, thanks to her Empowered healing. An orderly who didn’t ask questions pushed her wheelchair to the truck.

  I helped her stand with Gus’s help.

  “I didn’t think I was going to live,” she said, her voice barely audible.

  “You’re gonna live,” I told her.

  “How did I make it?” she asked as I buckled her in.

  “We got help."

  Her eyes focused on me. “You nearly killed me, bitch,” she said and then slipped away into sleep. How long would it be before she started another metal cyclone and tried to kill me again?

  The sun was shining by the time we arrived at my house. Going to have to forget about being stealthy. Support might get pissed. That was tough.

  I parked the truck in the garage. Gus jumped out and rolled the door back down. Keisha pulled away when I tried to help her out of the truck.

  “No more help from you,” she said. “You’ve done enough.”

  Screw her. I let Gus help her out of the truck. Sunlight shone through the garage door windows.

  “Thank you, thank you,” she kept murmuring to him.

  I had nearly killed her, granted, but she’d started the damn fight. I had saved her freaking life. If I hadn’t taken her to the Doc, she’d be deader than that dead mouse in the corner of the garage.

  The inside door to the house opened, and Alex looked out, wearing his scruffy hoodie and torn jeans.

  Gus gave Alex a funny look, surprise mingled with I don’t know what, distrust? He definitely acted like someone had given him a wedgie. Maybe he still had some of last night's iron in his backbone. Old Gus would have blended and vanished as soon as he saw Alex.

  For an instant, Alex looked surprised, but he covered it nicely.

  “I thought you said the house was empty, Mat,” Gus said accusingly.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” I told Alex.

  He shrugged. “You said I could crash here, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t remember that.”

  “Hey, not fair to go pulling the rug out from under me because you want to loan your crashpad to someone else. You said I could, and now you're acting like you don’t remember you told me that.”

  “I didn’t say you could.” We stared at each other; me the annoyed keeper of the crashpad, and Alex, the friend being denied what he wanted.

  �
�This sucks.” His gaze wandered over to Keisha. “Your friend looks hurt, dude.” The stoner slacker he was playing had a short attention span.

  “We got it covered, thanks.”

  Alex shrugged. “You gonna get help for her?”

  “Already done.”

  He shrugged. “Okay, just thought I’d point it out.”

  “Go out through the back, remember?”

  Alex slouched off back inside the house, conveniently leaving the door open.

  Keisha kept silent through all this, watching.

  “Friend of yours, Mat?” Gus asked.

  “Just some guy I met on the street. I fixed a problem he had with a drug dealer, he pointed me to this place, but the agreement was that this is my house. Not ours.”

  Keisha's lip curled. “Since when does a streeter like him stick to ‘agreements’?”

  “Sometimes they do.” I wasn’t letting her under my skin. Not now.

  She frowned. “You’re still a fool.”

  Inside the house Gus helped Keisha stretch out on the futon. I checked her temperature. She tried to pull away, but I insisted. It was almost normal.

  I went into the kitchen to make her breakfast and Gus followed me.

  “She’s going to be okay, isn’t she?” he said.

  “Yes.” Relief washed over me. She was going to live. Her healing had taken over. You could already see the old Keisha coming back. I opened an egg omelet with fruit Insta-Meal, added water, pulled the tab underneath, and the mix began heating. I felt lighter than I had in days. I never would have guessed I’d feel so good at her not dying, but I did.

  “You’re a lot alike,” Gus said.

  “Keisha and me? Don’t be crazy.” I opened the fruit packet, then fished around in the cabinet for the package of plastic cups, poured some orange juice.

  Gus leaned on the counter next to me. “But you are. You're both headstrong and fearless.”

  “You were pretty fearless back at the hospital, Gus.”

  “I couldn’t leave you in the lurch.” He didn’t look away. “I’m sorry about the Renegades, more than I can tell you.”

  I stiffened. “Why did you have to go bring that up?”

  He didn’t flinch. “I was afraid, Mat. The Professor had sent me out to look for something.”