by A. P. Kensey
Haven studied him carefully. “Why are you telling me this?” she asked.
“I need you to believe me when I say that I’m not like Bernam and the others. I didn’t hurt your brother. I wasn’t there when they took him.” Colton sighed. “My mother left my father and I because Bernam threatened to kill us if she didn’t join up with him. He tore my family apart. And now my mother is dead.”
“So you want revenge. You want to kill Bernam.”
His eyes flashed with anger. “I want to burn his world to the ground, like he did mine.”
Haven stared into his eyes for a long moment, and she could feel that connective pull growing stronger with each passing second.
She looked away when she heard the door to the training room close loudly behind her.
Micah stood just inside the entrance, sniffing and wiping away a tear. He looked alone and afraid. He shifted on his feet and looked at Haven with sad eyes. She didn’t realize how young he was until right then.
He walked to her with his head lowered and she wrapped her arms around him, hugging him close. He sniffed quietly into her shoulder and she rubbed his short hair.
“It will be okay,” said Haven. She couldn’t help but think of Noah and all the times she comforted him after he had a nightmare. Micah had to be at least twelve, but he looked so much younger. “He and Elena were very close,” she said to Colton.
At the mention of the old woman’s name, Micah closed his eyes and sobbed. Haven squeezed him harder. She looked at Colton and nodded. “Let’s burn it down,” she said. “All of it.”
34
The fire pit in the center of the dome room was cold and dark.
Marius and Corva sat next to each other, staring into the shadows between the grey stones. Dormer was not far off; he pretended to be deeply involved with repairing a small chunk of machinery and was ineffectively hiding his melancholy.
Haven stood just outside the ring of short chairs that encircled the pit with her hand on Micah’s shoulder. Colton stood farther away from the pit as if he was uncertain whether or not he was fully welcome.
“So, that’s the deal,” said Haven. She squeezed Micah’s shoulder as he stepped away to sit in one of the chairs nearby.
Marius sniffed loudly and wiped his nose. His eyes were red from crying but he had calmed down once Haven started to explain her desire to rescue her brother along with all the other prisoners at Bernam’s medical center. Dormer had noticeably stood a little straighter when she mentioned a rescue and had been inching closer to the conversation ever since.
“It’s too sad a time for nonsense,” said Marius. He stared at the rocks.
Corva put her hand on his back and rubbed it comfortingly. “Besides that,” she said, shaking her head, “you two are in no shape to fight anyone. Haven, you can barely focus your energy more than a few feet in front of you. And you,” she said, pointing at Colton, “you just had your ability swapped out. It will be weeks before you’re able to use it properly again.”
“You have guns,” said Colton. “Haven told me.”
Marius shook his head, his heavy brow drooping low over his eyes. “It is suicide. This is why we never go to this place before. Only one chance,” he said, raising his finger. “One chance to get inside before place is overrun with big men with bigger guns.”
Haven took a step forward. “Colton says that Bernam built a machine…”
“We know all about that,” said Corva.
“…and that he made it work using my brother—” She stopped to take a breath. “—using him as some sort of lab rat. He’ll die if we don’t do something.”
“What makes him so important?” said Dormer, no longer bothering to hide his interest. “My brother has been Bernam’s ‘guest’ for months, and this group never lifted a finger.”
“Then why did you stick around?” said Colton. “Why not try to save him on your own?”
Dormer glared at him but said nothing.
“Well,” said Haven, “we’re lifting a finger now. No one gets left behind.”
Dormer squinted at her suspiciously and went back to tinkering with the machinery in his hands.
“You,” said Corva, pointing at Colton again. “Why are you still here?”
“Marius said that Elena had a rule that anyone like you—like me—could stay, if they wanted.”
“Elena may have been the one to bring you back here even though we should have left you out in the cold, but now she’s dead,” said Corva. “She had a lot more faith in human nature than I do. Why are you so adamant about helping us?”
Colton looked at Haven, then quickly away. “Bernam has to be stopped before anyone else is hurt. If there’s even a chance that he can make himself stronger than he already is, we have to stop him before it’s too late.”
“We know about your mother. Revenge can be lethal for both sides,” said Corva. “It makes you reckless and puts everyone else in danger.”
“We’re going,” said Haven, looking around the circle. “With or without you.”
“I’m going, too,” said Dormer. He set down the chunk of machinery and crossed his arms. He looked from Marius to Corva, daring them to argue.
“No more waiting,” said Haven. “No more hiding.”
“Hiding is the only thing that has kept us alive for so long,” said Corva.
Marius squeezed her hand and stood up. “I will go. Otherwise you will all die, and Marius would be sadder than he is now.” He puffed out his chest and nodded.
Corva looked up at him, shocked. She sighed, then shook her head and stood up slowly. “I still say it’s a bad idea, but if my husband is going along to keep you alive, I have to go to keep him alive.”
“You two are married?!” said Colton.
“Why look so surprised?” asked Marius, genuinely hurt. “Marius not good enough for beautiful, athletic woman?” He looked Corva up and down, then glanced at his slightly-protruding gut and ran a hand over his receding hairline. He grinned. “Point taken. Marius is very lucky man!”
Despite his body losing the constant battle with age, Haven could tell that at one point—probably long ago, when he and Corva first met—Marius could have been considered handsome.
He stepped over to lift Corva from the ground but she held her hands up and stopped him.
“Listen to me, all of you,” she said. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to go about this. One little mistake and we’re all dead.”
Micah, who had been listening intently to the whole conversation, stood up next to Haven and gave Corva a thumb’s up. He smiled broadly and pushed his glasses higher on the bridge of his nose.
“Oh, no,” said Corva. “Absolutely not. You’re staying here. We need someone to get the rooms ready for visitors in case any of us make it back from this suicide mission alive.”
His shoulders sagged and he slumped back down into his chair. He crossed his arms and pouted.
“That police cruiser we drove back from Bozeman should get us there,” said Dormer. “And I finished repairing the sedan.”
“Okay, so we have transportation,” said Corva. “But that still doesn’t get us into the medical center. The entrance will be heavily guarded.”
Colton stepped forward.
“There’s another way,” he said. “When Shelly took me—I mean, when one of them took me to the black building, they pressed a button that had been installed in their car. A ramp dropped down from the ground and led to a huge underground parking structure. There were these tunnels that led off in every direction. I bet you anything that one of them goes to the medical center.”
“That’s great,” said Dormer, “but how do we get our hands on one of those buttons?”
“We draw them outside,” said Haven.
Marius snapped his fingers. “Last time they come swarming like bees for honey when we were there. They do same thing this time, only we try not to crash all of the trucks, yes?”
Haven nodded. “We save one to
get us into the parking structure.”
“It makes sense that there will be fewer guards underground,” said Dormer.
Corva looked at Colton. “How long until Bernam uses his machine?”
Colton shrugged. “I’m not sure. I just know that it’s ready.”
“And it’s in the black building?”
“They just told me that most of the place was off-limits. I was only allowed on a few levels.”
Corva sighed. “It’s either there or at Bernam’s medical facility. My bet is on the black building. I hate to even think this, but we should split up after we’re in the parking structure.”
“I’m going for Bernam,” said Colton quickly.
Corva nodded. “Marius and I will go as well. Dormer, I know you want to find your brother. Can you watch out for Haven?”
“I can handle it, yes.”
“Good,” said Corva. “After we clear out the entrance to the medical facility and grab one of their trucks, I would be surprised if you had to deal with anything more dangerous than a scalpel—but don’t get lazy.”
“All those years in the police force made you bossy,” said Dormer. He walked away from the fire pit and opened the hood of the black sedan. Haven heard the oil cap pop free.
“Right,” said Marius with a grin. “Now we get the gun.”
35
Colton stood atop a small sand dune, the wind whipping grainy particles into his eyes. He blinked and rubbed at a piece of sand stuck under an eyelid for the tenth time.
“How long is this going to take?” he asked.
“Let Marius check,” said Marius. He shifted the bulky automatic rifle slung over his shoulder and looked at his wrist, pretending to read the time from a nonexistent watch. “No idea.”
Corva smiled. She stood next to Marius, anxiously watching the above-ground entrance to the medical facility. Four heavily-modified black pickup trucks with extended cabs were parked next to the small building.
Colton looked behind him. At the base of the dune, Haven sat in the parked sedan with Dormer. The empty police cruiser was a few feet away, pointed toward the faint dirt road that had led them to the facility.
“Let’s give another ‘hello’,” said Marius. He rested his open palm against the back of Corva’s neck.
“Just don’t waste it all before we get inside,” she said.
“Don’t worry. Marius has plenty.”
Orange light flamed up from his shoulder and cascaded down his arm like liquid. It flowed around Corva’s neck like a thick necklace and moved over her arms to her outstretched hands. The energy formed into a sphere the size of a softball on each hand, then rocketed away, toward the building.
Colton saw the two black streaks of charred concrete on the roof of the facility from where Corva had hit it the first time. Her second attempt hit the glass of the front door dead center, shattering the panel into thousands of tiny shards.
“Bullseye!” said Marius. He took his hand from Corva’s neck and the orange flames flickered and died. “Now they will swarm.”
A minute later, a dozen men in black military uniforms ran out of the building, each one carrying a rifle. They hurried to the trucks and climbed inside, some of them pushing the others out of the way for a chance to drive.
“It’s like watching dogs fight over the last chicken bone,” said Corva.
Marius barked laughter and Colton couldn’t help but smile.
He had been feeling sick ever since his mother had given him her ability. It still moved inside him like a foreign presence, never quite settling down into that comfortable spot he had known before Bernam had taken it from him in the first place.
His stomach growled loudly—in the excitement of leaving The Dome, he had also forgotten to eat.
Colton felt a slight pull in the direction of the police cruiser—it was like a giant, invisible hand that tugged him toward the car. He looked down at Haven and saw that she was staring up at him. She turned away quickly and the pulling sensation disappeared.
The feeling was nowhere near as strong as it had been in Bozeman, but there was no longer any denying who was causing it. Colton had first noticed its return in the training room at The Dome, then again when they were all getting into the cars to drive to the medical facility. He wanted to say something to Haven about it, but didn’t know how to begin without sounding ridiculous.
“Here we go,” said Marius.
The tires of the black trucks squealed as the vehicles shot out of the parking lot and veered onto the dirt road that led to the sand dune where Colton and the others stood.
“Back to the car,” said Corva.
Colton followed her and Marius down the side of the dune and stood next to the police cruiser—hopefully the car was out of sight of the approaching trucks.
Dormer had already pulled the sedan out from behind the dune and sped down the road, away from the medical facility.
“Get the last one,” said Marius as the first of the trucks passed the dune, chasing after the sedan. “And don’t miss.”
He put his hands on Corva’s shoulders and squeezed tightly. Orange flame—brighter than before—shot over her body from head to toe, then pooled at her hands. She held out a pointer finger and closed one eye to aim.
When the last of the four trucks sped past the dune, she tracked its movement with her arm. A thin orange laser shot from the tip of her finger and shattered the truck’s driver-side window. It burned straight through the cabin and exploded out the other side, ripping off the passenger-side door and sending it flying up into the air.
The truck veered off the road and decelerated quickly before stopping roughly against the base of a large sand dune.
“Nice shot!” said Colton.
Marius hurried to the truck and opened the driver’s door. The driver was dead—Corva’s energy beam had burned into his temple and come out the other side. Marius pulled him out of the truck and sat him against the dune. The passenger groaned and started to lift his head, but Marius knocked him out with a heavy right cross to the jaw and pulled him outside. The third security guard in the back seat of the extended cab hadn’t been wearing his seat belt and lay unconscious against one of the back doors, blood trickling down his forehead. Marius pulled him out and set him on the ground next the others.
“Would have been nice to have both doors,” said Marius as he sat in the driver’s seat. He looked at the empty space where the passenger door had been before Corva’s energy blast ripped it off the truck.
“Would it be nice to spend the rest of your life single?” said Corva.
She sat next to him as Colton climbed into the back.
“On second thought,” said Marius. “Is sort of like convertible now, only different. Marius changed his mind. He likes it.”
“I thought so,” said Corva. She winked at him.
Marius backed the truck away from the dune and drove onto the dirt road, a fog of dust pluming up from the tires.
“What about the other trucks?” asked Colton.
“Dormer can handle them,” said Corva.
“Are you sure?”
“Trust me. He’s tougher than he looks.”
Colton sat back in his seat and squinted against the air that blasted into the cabin from the missing door.
Marius gave his automatic rifle to Corva, who popped out the long ammunition clip, checked the rounds, and slapped the clip back into the gun.
“And if he can’t,” said Marius, “maybe we get to have a little more fun.”
“You know where the black building is?” shouted Colton from the back seat.
Corva nodded. “We found it last year. We knew about the medical facility long before—that’s the reason we set up camp so close.”
“Right next to the hornet’s nest,” said Colton.
“Best place to be if you need to act quickly. It makes sense that the two sites are linked. We were never able to figure out how they were moving around without being seen.”
/>
The truck rode smoothly down the dirt road. The oversized, off-road tires had been specifically designed to absorb the heaviest bumps, and Colton barely felt anything when one of the wheels dipped down into a large pothole and bounced out the other side.
Marius skirted the base of a huge, rocky hill, and on the other side, in the distance, was the gleam of a black, glass-covered building.
“That’s it!” said Colton.
“Where’s the entrance?” asked Corva.
Colton looked around the huge, open space surrounding the building. He tried to remember a specific landmark that Shelly drove past right before the Jeep rolled down into the tunnel.
A few hundred yards to the right he saw the two large boulders that she had driven between right before she opened the ramp.
“There!” he shouted, pointing at the giant stones. “On the other side.”
Marius accelerated and drove toward the boulders. Just as he cleared the base of a mountain of jagged rocks, the black sedan careened around the other side and caught up with the truck.
Dormer sat behind the wheel of the black car, pointing back over his shoulder. He held up three fingers, then lowered two of them until only his index finger remained.
Marius nodded at Dormer and took his foot off the gas pedal.
One of the black trucks sped around the side of the mountain, kicking up rocks and dirt in its wake. It barreled toward Colton and the others.
“Don’t wait too long,” said Marius.
Corva leaned out the side of the truck and grabbed the edge of the roof. She stood up and faced backward. Marius reached over and grabbed her leather belt to keep her from falling out. She rested the stock of the rifle in the crook of her shoulder and aimed down the long barrel.
With a loud CRACK of gunfire, the hood on the pursuing truck exploded up into the air and flipped end over end until it smacked into the ground.
Two armed security guards leaned out of their truck and raised their guns.