Cryostorm (Touch of Frost)

by Lynn Rush

  Even worse, my Nate had tried to kill me.

  Chapter 25

  “Oh my God, what happened? What just happened?” Georgia said as she paced in front of me, still glowing.

  “Get her up and back to the car.” Tim flipped on his scan. “We can’t leave Lois and Zach alone.”

  I hopped to my feet. “What’s going on, Tim?” I yelled. Anger surged through me so forcefully my hands frosted over. I was on the edge of exploding like an atom bomb of ice.

  “Come on,” he said and turned up the path. “Hurry.”

  I followed after him. “Talk.”

  “Trigger. Something triggered it. He didn’t know what it was—”

  “Triggered what? You—” It dawned on me. “Melanie. When she went ape on me. He looked like that. He went limp, ticked, then attacked.”

  “Shit,” Tim said.

  We neared the corner of the building, but like big, human-sized cockroaches, people dressed in black from head to toe crept out from every surrounding shadow I could have imagined.

  My ice encapsulated me so quickly I stumbled. Both hands ignited in sprays so strong, the three people approaching me from both sides stumbled to the ground. Oh, God. Was Nate really an Agent after all?

  I almost puked.

  “Stand down!” A male voice bellowed.

  “Like hell,” I said and took aim at the pack of three creeping in. Funny, though, they didn’t attack, only crept toward us. Usually Agents were all about the attacking. New tactic maybe?

  “Georgia, get Lois and Zach. Tim get behind me.”

  A dart of orange flame sped to the car, shooting balls of fire at the seven figures coming up behind the car.

  “GEM. We’re GEM. You contacted us.” Another voice yelled out. “Dustin Parks. Dustin Parks.”

  The guy in front of me, well, several feet away, but in front of me, raised his hands in surrender. Gun tossed to the ground.

  “What’d you do with Nate? Where is he?” I yelled. Still iced down, my jaw throbbed. I wasn’t in my healing ice, more my protective shell, but my jaw throbbed like a Banshee. Nate had done that to me. He’d hit me harder than I’d ever been hit in my life. Even harder than Andrey.

  “One sped through. Is that your Nate?”

  “Shut up. You’re lying. What’d you do with him? You can’t have him. You—what’d you do to?” I pointed at the dark figure. He had his hands up still.

  “Wait. I’m going to move very slowly here. I’m going to take off my mask. Just call off your sister. I don’t want to lose any of my men. We came as observers, not to engage. Please, we’re GEM. You’re Amanda Hillman. Fell off the grid five years ago with your brother. Parents dead, suicide, but suspicious.”

  Tim stepped beside me. “How do you know that?”

  “Traced your call. Nice job encoding. Took a while.” The guy raised his hand to his face. “Just removing the mask.”

  “Slow,” I said. “Georgia. Hold up.”

  I glanced at the car. Lois and Zach were safe in the back.

  Ten more army dudes formed out of the darkness like they’d come from a mist. Tears still welling in my eyes distorted my vision so I didn’t trust what I saw. Maybe it was twenty. I tensed. Stay focused. They could be Agents.

  The guy removed his mask, revealing dark skin and dark hair. He stood tall, and I could tell he was muscular beneath all that black Gore-Tex the way it pressed against him. He drew in a breath. “I’m not much for combat, but Dad sent me to check out the claims.”

  “Claims?” Tim said.

  “Excuse me?” The guy leaned forward.

  “What claims?” Tim said a little louder.

  “To check out Fire and Ice.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen a lot, but never fire and ice and because of an experiment.”

  “You know a lot. Too much. You have to be one of them,” I said.

  “You guys do a good job, hide well.” He smiled, his white teeth contrasting his dark skin and catching the moonlight. “But not that well.”

  Tim huffed behind me.

  “It’s a good thing you called my dad. We can help.”

  “Where’s Nate?” My voice was mostly air. My heart cracked and my head throbbed. Now that I thought about it, my wrist hurt, my eye pulsed, and my back stung.

  “Georgia, come here,” Tim said. He put his hand on me. “Mandy. Heal yourself. Go on.”

  “No.” Not in front of them. Too vulnerable. Not safe.

  Georgia’s warming flame came near me, but she kept a distance around the guys, like a skittish cat.

  “I’ll watch over you. I think these guys are on the up and up, Mandy.”

  Oh yeah, my sister’s feelings. Probably a gift I didn’t get. But the truth in her words must have triggered my body’s desire to faint, fall down, collapse, whatever. The adrenaline rush was over, and I crashed hard.

  Tim guided me to the ground.

  Mr. Commando moved forward.

  “Stay back,” Georgia said, her flames brightening.

  I cast one last look to the car. No one was moving on it. Georgia would protect us. I had to heal, everything hurt. Mostly my heart, but I didn’t think my ice could fix that.

  I slumped against Tim’s body. He knelt behind me, supporting my back and let me ease to the ground. Crackling started. “Better let go.”

  Tim acted too quickly, and I thumped to the ground the last couple of inches.

  “Tim,” Georgia said.

  “What’s she doing?” Mr. Commando asked.

  I kept my eyes trained on the stranger since it seemed he was in charge. I’d bust out of my healing ice if he flinched wrong, though.

  “Healing. Stay back,” Georgia said. “I’m a little trigger-happy with my flame right now. You didn’t get the guy running out of here.”

  “Someone else was here with speed? That makes sense. We saw something blur past us as we approached. Couldn’t track it though.”

  “Thought you’d know all of us,” Georgia said.

  I relaxed against my healing ice and let it take me.

  “Tim Cohen made the call, or at least someone from his phone. But his voice sounds like that of the person who left the message. Georgia Hillman, twin to Amanda Hillman, both sisters to Scott Hillman. No genetic alterations. Someone named Jasmine helps guard Scott, but oddly enough, we couldn’t track down her last name.”

  “Wow,” Tim said.

  “Gary and Lois Kelsey raised Georgia. Lois went missing, but Gary is intact, unaware of anything from outward appearances.”

  “Damn,” Georgia said. “You guys are good. So help me if you’re on the wrong side of things, I won’t be able to control my nuclear ability, you hear me?” She glanced at me. “You good?”

  No. How could I be good? My Nate kicked the living crap out of me, then left. My heart had crumbled into about a million pieces and was scattered out on the white snow behind the rest area.

  I wasn’t even in the same galaxy as good. But I couldn’t stay in my shell forever, so I called the ice back in and rolled to my side, then to my fours. A good cough cleared out all the haze, and I hopped to my feet.

  “Amazing,” Mr. Commando said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Brandon. Brandon Parks, Dustin’s son.” He stepped forward, hand outstretched. “Nice to meet you, Mandy.”

  “Wow. Nice little Agent, aren’t you? And you don’t get to call me Mandy.”

  He cupped his hand around his left ear. “Sorry?”

  “Never mind.” I shook my head, thankful nothing hurt anymore. Well, almost nothing. “So, what’s the scoop?”

  “I’m from the desert, so I’m used to warmth, maybe we could go inside?” He gestured to the building. “We can talk.”

  “Where is everyone?” I glanced around the semis.

  “Oh, they’re sleeping. It’s okay.” He moved toward the building.

  “Sleeping, huh?”

  He shrugged. “It’s safe. Can’t have witnesses.”

&n
bsp; Lovely.

  “I’ll get Zach and Lois.” Tim moved around us.

  Brandon led the way, and I glanced at Georgia. She nodded and said, “Got a good feeling about this.”

  “Yeah, well, what’s your take on what happened to Nate?” I asked.

  Her forehead scrunched and eyebrows puckered. It wasn’t a good sign for my sister to distort her face like that without just cause. This wasn’t going to be anything I wanted to hear.

  She sucked in a deep breath. “Band-Aid method. Okay?”

  Oh great. Really bad if it’s going to sting like ripping a Band-Aid off. “Okay, go.”

  “I think he’s an Agent after all.”

  I whirled around and buried my fist into the first hard surface I found. Too bad it turned out to be brick. Oh the pain hurt so bad but felt so good. “Shit!”

  Brandon flinched, and his fist tightened like his own hand hurt. “Super strength, but not impenetrable skin when it comes to sharp objects.”

  “Needles especially.” I winced as I shook out my crackling knuckles. “Sorry.”

  Brandon held the door open for us, and I followed Georgia in, cradling my hand. Tim, Lois, and Zach filed in after one another. Zach was instantly by my side.

  “Mandy.” He reached for my crimson-tainted hand. “What happened?”

  “Punched a wall.” I glanced around. Just Brandon and two other army dudes came in. They stood by the doors, watching. “Hold on a second.”

  I called the healing ice to my hand and let it go to work for a second before I looked up. “So, talk.”

  “Well, you know enough about us to have called. Message was vague at best.”

  “Figured you’d send scouts. So. Are we GEM material?” Tim asked.

  “We?” Brandon nodded in Tim’s direction.

  Tim flashed his eyes red. “Broke your shoulder once, didn’t you? I see a ding there on the left clavicle.”

  “X-ray. We couldn’t find much on you. It took a while to even find your names. Especially this Nate person. You said he has speed and ran away? Why?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Nothing on him I’m afraid. Like a bit of a black hole to tell you the truth. Most we found was on the Hillmans here.” He glanced to my left. “You’re Zachary Landry. Human.”

  “Boyfriend.” He grabbed my hand.

  “Former.” I shook free from his hold. “Brandon, look, we’re not real sure we can trust you. And the shit that just went down out back, I don’t have a clue what’s going on right now. But Tim, I think you do and you better talk or I’m going to explode.”

  “Trigger. Remember Melanie?”

  “Hello. Totally tried to kill me. That’s not something you forget very easily. What’s this got to do with my boyfriend trying to kill me?”

  Zach snapped straight up. “Kill you?”

  “Not now, Zach.” I looked to Tim. “Yes. He did that thing Melanie did. You seemed to know what’s going on. And he said it’s happening to you. Talk.”

  Our new friend, Brandon, stood there, watching, absorbing every detail, I could tell by how his eyes were dancing from each of us as we talked.

  “He told me he thought something was off with that Melanie chick. How she went nuts like that, then morphed into those steel arms didn’t sit well with him. She hid her power, sure, that’s fine. Whatever role she had, she played, acted Academy Award-like and everything. But when you said she went nuts after showing her the book, it worried Nate.”

  “Worried how? And why didn’t he tell me?”

  “Because he thought it had something to do with you.” Tim shook his head and pulled Georgia to him. “He couldn’t pinpoint it, and then the other night, he had that dream, you remember?”

  “Pounded down our door,” Georgia said.

  “He said it was a dream of me getting hurt.” I was getting madder by the minute. Nate was withholding stuff from me again, and it almost got me killed. But my anger disappeared in an instant when an image of him fighting through the red flare in his eye flashed. He was holding whatever was controlling him back, telling me to run, like he was fighting something inside him.

  “That’s all he told you?”

  “Yeah. But there’s more by the sounds of it. What? Did I die?”

  Tim looked down.

  “Shit,” I said. “Really? But it’s not his power to see the future. He can’t know if I’m going to die.”

  “Well,” Brandon said. “Some people do have that power.”

  “Holy crap. Really? Did some scientists make them from a Petri dish, too?” I asked.

  “Excuse me?” Brandon said.

  “Petri dish. You know? Cocktail then throw it in a woman’s womb and see what happens?” I pushed away from Zach. “Get off me.” My head was about to start spinning.

  “Wait, there’s more.” Tim’s voice was close. I turned to see him towering over me, Georgia right beside him.

  “What, man? Might as well lay it on me. It’s been a fantastic evening, let’s add to it.”

  “Mandy.” Tim squeezed my shoulder. “You didn’t just die in his dream.”

  “What? Did a vampire get me and turn me into a demon?” I shook my head. “What, Tim?”

  “Nate killed you.” My heart stopped.

  Literally.

  But then it crashed against my chest at a pace that would surely use up all my allotted heartbeats within the next thirty seconds. Nate killed me?

  “So, he had a dream and that made him try and kill her? Even though he loves her?” Georgia said.

  “Not the dream. He must have been created with some trigger, like Melanie. Triggered to kill you when you said something to him.”

  “Great. So, he was created to kill me? But first he’d fall in love with me. Rescue me from countless Agents. Kill Agents for me. Give up his entire life to protect me and take care of me, only to kill me after I—” I tunneled my fingers into my hair. “I know what I said that triggered it.”

  “What?”

  I looked from Zach to Tim to Georgia. “I told him I loved him.”

  “That triggered it?” Georgia said as she reached for me. She’d known how scared I was to say those words to another guy after Zach.

  “When we’d talked the other day he tried to say it to me. But he couldn’t. Then again at the café before we went to get Zach, he tried to say it twice but couldn’t. Said he was scared something might happen. I didn’t understand but—”

  “No. That makes sense.” Tim paced. “He told me he’d felt like something was planted in him, not planted in the sense of all those trackers he took out of your body that night, but planted as in a suggestion. He’d wanted to say those words to you for a while. Just felt like he couldn’t. Or more like he shouldn’t.”

  “So, if he had said them he would have been triggered?”

  “Okay, excuse me,” Brandon said. “If I’m hearing all of this correctly, and I think I got most of it, he tried to tell you he loved you, but physically couldn’t say the words. But when you said them, he attacked.”

  Nothing like airing my dirty laundry out for strangers to see.

  “Then it’s an implanted suggestion. Love was the trigger word. He couldn’t say it, but if he heard it, it activated the residual suggestion.”

  “But the word love is said all over the place. Movies, normal talk, that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Not if the suggestion was to come from a specific person he’d been ordered to kill. Only that voice could activate the trigger. It’s simple posthypnotic suggestion.”

  “Field agent and a book guy,” I said.

  “Not really a field agent. More a book guy.”

  “Great. A newbie taking care of us,” Georgia said.

  “But I want to clarify something else.” Brandon stepped toward me. “So, there’s someone out there, with speed, who knows about you and now GEM, but is being controlled by someone or something else?”

  “Um. Yes? But…I don’t think he’s programmed to
kill me. He…said I was to go with him.” I glanced at Georgia. “And he was talking weird. Like more formal.”

  “What else?” Brandon asked.

  “He’s got speed, strength, and off the charts genius,” Tim said.

  “And I wasn’t kidding about the Petri dish thing, either,” I said.

  Brandon’s eyes nearly popped out of his head at that comment. “So, he’s not human.”

  Lois gasped. “That’s what he meant when he said you guys were products of moms and dads who were victims. He wasn’t born to parents from the experiment like you three?”

  I shook my head. Tears began to sting again. I was sick of them, but I had no control. My Nate. Already The Center’s pawn by the ID slapped across his chest, but now, even more so. They’d programmed him to either kill me or take me and he hadn’t even known it.

  Chapter 26

  Several GEM agents surrounded us as they escorted us to a dark Humvee with darkened windows.

  “So, Brandon. You’re a GEM Agent? What’s GEM stand for?” Tim asked.

  “Genetically Enhanced Marshals.”

  “Oh, you’re a Marshal. Wait, genetically enhanced? What can you do?” I asked.

  He smiled and reached his hand out. It went invisible—well sort of. The moonlight hit the space where his hand should be, and it shimmered like specks of mist catching the moon’s rays. He reached into the car, then pulled something out. When his arm and hand came into focus it held a bottle of water.

  “Holy shit, Man,” Tim said. “What the—”

  “I call it melting, but basically, I disintegrate into semi-solid—”

  I held up my hand. “No science talk. You melt. I Ice. Georgia flames. Tim X-rays. Zach and Lois are plain ole humans.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Lois said.

  “Okay, not plain ole humans, but human. So, we don’t need all your guys huddled around us. Just them. And what’s the plan to get Nate?” I said.

  “Any idea where he went?”

  “Not a clue. We’re in…where are we?”

  “Eastern part of Colorado. About four and a half hours from Aspen.”

  “The GEM base,” Tim said. “We going there? Will your dad take us in? We’ve got to get The Center and Bev’s guys off our backs.”