I couldn’t take my eyes off them. Damn it. I had to stop them.
There was a low hum and then Simon fired his stunner at the nearest one. Its spindly branches waved frantically, the thousands of tiny legs folded underneath it. For an instant it was still, then the thing started moving again.
Zap! Simon hit it again.
Same thing happened.
And the other trees were coming closer.
Simon fired again and again, hitting one tree-thing and then another. Each stopped, thudded against the ground. A moment later they stood and began walking on thousands of tiny root-like legs toward us.
I had to do something.
I extended my power toward them, dropping the mental wall I’d thrown up back in the rain forest.
The chaotic sounds of the rain forest were distant now, almost like the ocean. The rain forest was afraid, the nearer trees straining to grow away from the field. Now I knew why.
I reached into the nearest whatever-the-hell those tree-things were. A ringing ripped through my mind, and I bent over, like someone had slugged me. Damn.
“What is it?” Simon asked me.
“Those aren’t alive like plants or trees,” I managed to gasp. Those things weren’t life. They were like unlife.
Had to get it together. I straightened up. No tree thing was going to get the better of me. Too much riding on this job. I pushed my awareness deeper inside the thing. It wasn’t anything botanical. It was alien. It didn’t have the circulation of a tree, didn’t have the rings. It was like a living machine. I felt things like rods and cones rippling inside it.
I didn’t know where to begin trying to control it. With a tree, a blackberry vine, or a flower, I could do it without thinking, control and reshape plants as I wanted.
But this was like trying to find a handhold on a wall of glass. There was no place to grab. My power wanted to slip out of the thing. It hurt like hell to keep pushing inside it.
The tree thing rippled closer, the others right behind it.
An actual tree would have at least moaned its shock, but this thing didn’t give off any reaction, just stopped for an instant like the other one, then started moving forward again.
A cloud of razor blade-shaped metal spun into the rippling green mass, slicing into whip-like branches, and thunking into the shimmering, scaly bark.
Keisha sat on top of the arch, conjuring metal with her power, sweat pouring off her, her face contorted like a crazy woman’s.
The branches writhed. She did it again, and again. Tips of ropey branches were sliced off. A dozen blades were stuck in the scaled bark. Black oily sap leaked out. The tree-thing gave a ringing hum. Sap boiled away, melting the blades, and the thing sprouted new branches.
“How do you kill it?” Keisha shouted. She lowered her arm. “I can’t keep doing this.”
“Then get down here and start shooting!” I aimed at the tree-thing closest to my end of the ice bridge, and fired.
Again, the target sat down with a thunk, then the thousand root-like legs started up again and the plant-creature moved toward me. It homed in on a threat and attacked.
I fired at the one next to it. “Keep hitting them,” I told Simon.
Simon nodded. “They respond to attack by attack.”
No duh.
He pulled his battery pack from his stunner, slapped in another one. We each carried a spare. Stunners sucked because they didn’t hold a charge, but guns and Empowered don’t mix.
Why? Because an Empowered using a firearm was the death sentence, and not just rogue Empowered like the Scourge, but sanctioned ones in the Hero Council. It makes sense—if normals, which make up almost all humanity, see Empowered using guns, on top of already possessing powers, they’d crucify us.
So yeah, the law really was for Empowered good, for once. The Professor, who led the Renegades, the gang I was in before going to Special Corrections at sixteen, had stressed that point, and told us stories of a couple of idiot rogue Empowered who, years earlier, decided to use assault weapons. “They were executed and their bodies cremated,” he had told me.
So, no firearms. Stunners we could get away with because they couldn’t kill, and they ate batteries for breakfast.
Keisha hit the ground and ran over to join us, firing her stunner.
That left Coldie on the arch. She stood up, balancing at the top.
“Get down here!” I shouted at her, but she ignored me. She conjured an ice ball the size of a pumpkin and sent it cannonballing at a tree-thing. It slammed into the thing’s body and knocked it over. The thousands of tiny insect-like legs squirmed. Coldie grinned. “Get up from that!”
The tree-thing twisted and pulled itself up like a kid’s toy.
Coldie’s face fell.
I jerked a hand at her. “Come down now.”
She slid down the arch, hit the ground, but didn’t run to us. She faced the things.
“I’ll teach them.”
Fucking idiot.
She gestured again and a spear of ice stabbed from her hand at the nearest tree-thing. Coldie twisted it, and frost spread over the thing’s scale-like bark.
It stiffened.
“Gotcha!”
“Come on, fool,” Keisha yelled at Coldie.
The thing’s scales brightened and the frost steamed away.
“Somehow it’s generating heat,” Simon said. “This is not good.”
No kidding.
Coldie doubled down on the ice spear and jabbed again. The spear’s head flashed and the ice exploded, sending shards in all directions. She clutched her face.
I hit the tree with my stunner, but the beam died. I slapped in my second battery pack while Keisha fired at the others, trying to keep them back.
The tree-thing whipped its branches at Coldie, and she screamed as the barbed tips dug into her.
I fired at it, but the stunner didn’t have any effect.
Keisha waved her hands, and a buzzsaw blade grew out of the steaming air in front of her.
She snapped her fingers and the buzzsaw spun at the tree, slicing through one of the bigger branches. It made a shrieking whistle sound and dropped Coldie, who sprawled on the ground, unconscious.
I sprinted to her. I flung her over my shoulder and hauled ass back to Simon and Keisha.
“We’ve got to get to the other side of the field.” My words gasped out the words
We ran across the field, and reached the electro-barrier at the far side. The alien plant-creatures were maybe a hundred yards back, fanned out into a line, like wolves cornering prey, making that high-pitched ringing hum, barbed branches whipping at the air.
Rain forest trees grew in a line about fifteen feet from the other side of the electro-barrier. I reached into the nearest one, pushed my power deep inside the tree, ignoring the tree’s rumbling moans swelling up in my brain, forced it to grow its limb, pulling nutrients into its roots and nitrogen and oxygen from the air. This was going to hurt like hell in about ten seconds, but so what?
“Ophelia’s turning blue,” Simon said. “Blood reaction?”
“Give her a medpack.”
He slapped one on her neck. The tree branch was huge now, reaching past the electro-barrier and looming over us.
Keisha and Simon both threw nylon ropes over the branch.
Coldie moaned.
Good. I turned her so that she hung over my back. “You hear me, Coldie?”
No response.
Simon scrambled up the rope and back to where the branch met the trunk. He fired past us.
We scrambled up to join him and swung across the branch.
Behind us, beyond the electro-barrier, the monster plant-creatures stood in a line, branches waving, the whip-like tendrils moving in time.
I shuddered. Where had these nightmare things come from?
Acknowledgments
I couldn’t have written Empowered: Traitor without the support and help of so many folks: my writers group, the awesome Masked Hucks
ters, Jennifer Willis, Rebecca Stefoff, and Wendy Wagner; my equally awesome editor, Mary Rosenblum, whose keen insight into what makes a compelling story helped more than I can say; my beta readers Becky, Brian, Jill, Kathleen, Mark, Nick, Rebecca, Tracy, Vic; my cover designer Clarissa Yeo; my vigilant typo hunters Cindy, Colleen, Greg, and Mandy, and my professional proof reader Kendra Moll.
Most of all I couldn’t have done without the support and encouragement of my wonderful wife, LeAnn, who is my first reader.
About the Author
Dale Ivan Smith writes fantasy and science fiction, and is the author of The Empowered series. When he’s not writing or reading, he’s working as a para-librarian for Multnomah County Library, in Portland, Oregon.
You can find him here:
@daleivan
daleivansmithauthor
www.daleivansmith.com
[email protected]
Empowered: Agent (The Empowered Series Book 1) Page 24