As they tore down the main boulevard, heading for the freeway onramp, Noriko bent her attention back to the woman that was reporting the situation to them.
“—don’t know how this happened,” she was saying, tone distraught. “We were just here three days ago, and I passed by the place this morning and didn’t notice anything unusual. I was actually on my way home when I felt the air go weird and stopped to double check things. I’m without my partner out here, I can’t do anything about this, and for whatever reason no one at the Mojave station is responding.”
That sounded very weird. Even if there was no one at the station to answer, the call should have been automatically routed to police dispatch, who had ways of contacting people.
Jack must have had the same thought as he asked, “Not even dispatch is responding?”
“No, no one. It’s like the lines are all dead.”
Now that smacked of sabotage. No way a police station just lost all communications.
All of a sudden the woman let out an audible gasp and a keening noise that sounded almost animalistic in pain.
Banderas, if he had possessed the ability, would have transported himself through the radio channel in that moment. “Jack, get this thing to go faster.”
Jack immediately spun, hit the manual override, and floored the gas pedal. The van jerked forward, throwing them all off balance and rocking into each other.
This demand didn’t make sense to Noriko. She looked to Charlotte, who was the only one not confused by Banderas’s reaction. “Charlie?”
“Only one time Javier and I have ever heard a person make a sound like that,” she explained. A shaking hand reached up to push a stray lock of hair away from her face. “It was a Mægen that had gotten too close to an open ley line. She nearly fried herself. Took her two months to recuperate enough to return to work.”
Oh. Oh no. That woman was still standing out there, near an open line? A Mægen couldn’t do much of anything in a situation like this, not by herself. What was she thinking, staying in an obviously dangerous area?
Lizzie slapped open her phone’s app, called up the station, and demanded through the phone, “Dispatch, this is Team Pathfinder, I need an ambulance headed this direction. Make sure that one of our medics is on board, too.”
Banderas waved a hand to get her attention. “Get Khanh and John over here as well. Someone has to figure out why the Mojave Station isn’t responding; it might be technical trouble.”
Waving a hand to him to show she’d heard him, Lizzie repeated, “Send Khanh and John Vo to Mojave Station. They’re not responding and we think there’s a communication problem. Tell them not to use the 58. I repeat, NO ONE is to use the 58. Take the back highway there.”
Fortunately for Noriko’s strained nerves, the drive was a very short one. The only thing separating Tehachapi from Mojave was the Tehachapi Mountains, and once through that mountain pass, they were almost in Mojave’s jurisdiction. The weigh station sat just at the front of the pass, a leftover from earlier days when weigh stations still had to be manned. Now there was a completely automated one near the Mojave Bypass that did the job. The old one had been closed for a good three decades, but the gates were open as the van barreled across the four lane freeway, skirting around the concrete barriers, and inside the shell remains of the station.
A small red coupe sat just inside the gates, a woman collapsed on the ground and vomiting into the sand. From her red jacket and the insignia of the tree on her left arm, it was clearly the person who had put the call into them.
Banderas pointed to her. “Lars, get a shield around her now before she burns herself out. Stay with her until the medics arrive, then come help us. Cameron, you go left, I’ll take right. Stabilize this thing before it blows us all to kingdom come.”
If Cameron responded, it was lost on Noriko. The ley line before, the one on the old highway, had been bad, and of course the one at the Lab had spewed power like a miniature gusher, but this was a hundred times worse. This one ran completely exposed to the open air for a good half a mile, visible even to the naked eye, as it looked like lightning shooting out of the ground. The air was so electrified that when they opened the door, she felt statically charged and actually shocked herself on the door as she stepped out.
Grabbing her hand, Cameron hauled her directly to the left. She felt his hand trembling a little and knew that he was reacting like her. The earth shook under the force of the power, and because ley lines always ran in between fault lines, there grew a very real chance that they stood on top of a budding earthquake. Groans rumbled in the air as the land slowly wrenched apart, ground crumbling in on top of the active ley line so that it looked as if it were melting over an open flame.
As they moved, two different holes appeared at random, like sink holes, power glowing out of them. Noriko felt like she was navigating a mine field, one that would explode even without her tripping over it.
This was frankly terrifying and if there had been any way to do it, she would have run in the opposite direction. But there wasn’t. No one could outrun something like this, it would be like trying to outrun a tsunami. This thing had minutes before it blew apart, taking everything with it. Her only chance was to fix the situation before it could detonate in her face.
Somehow, miraculously, Cameron turned to her and gave her that patented devil-may-care smile of his. “Time to test our limits, Spidey.”
She gasped around the nauseous pit in her stomach, actively fighting the urge to throw up. “You got a place to put it?”
“Yup.” He jerked a chin to indicate an area just behind them.
Turning, Noriko saw that what she had walked over without a second glance was a nearly drained ley line. It was large enough to house half of the energy she saw dancing in front of her eyes. Is this where all of that excessive power had come from? Must be.
Noriko tried to draw upon some inner strength, some well of courage, but even then she felt inadequate to the job facing them. It was the steadiness of Cameron’s eyes on her, his patience as he waited for her to give him power to work with, that focused her. There was trust in his expression, a trust that she could not bring herself to betray. So she took in a breath and informed him, “I’m sitting down for this.”
“Go for it.”
It was either sit or collapse. She chose the dignity of sitting. Dropping into a seiza position, like a martial artist before a bout, she found some internal balance. Then she grabbed at the power sparking right in front of her.
Yooooowwwouch! It felt like grabbing hold of a lightning bolt. If power started shooting out of her eyes or fingertips, Noriko wouldn’t have been the least bit astonished. Still, she had expected it to be at least this bad, and after the last time, she wasn’t surprised. Hurting, but not surprised, and she knew how to handle insane power now. Experience was a wonderful teacher.
Channeling it, she shot it toward Cameron, who was open and waiting to receive it. He flinched at the first touch, jumping back a half step. “Wow.”
“Sorry,” she apologized through gritted teeth. “I’m modulating it as much as I can.”
“Don’t apologize, Spidey, this is just jacked up. Give me more, I can handle it. The sooner we get this back where it’s supposed to be, the better.”
Now that she could agree with one hundred percent. Remembering what he had told her, that his max was seventy-eight kilomerlins, she fed him seventy-five. It felt insane to her, to tackle this much power all at once. It was equivalent to seventy-five thousand watts, after all, and barely .2 amps was all it took to kill a normal human being. Not even Mægencræftas and Dwolcræftas, who had the special talent and training it took to handle raw power, were immune to electrocution. A wrong step and they could kill themselves.
Of course, it was her job to make sure that neither of them did that. Usually that was easy. Right now, not so much.
She could not spare the attention to see how anyone else was doing. It took every ounce of skill and
focus she had to not endanger either of them. But she could feel the power being steadily drained, she could hear the wail of the sirens as the ambulance arrived, and the way that people shouted information back and forth.
Someone—likely Jack—had had the sense to call in for backup, and they arrived on scene and immediately pitched in. Noriko recognized at least one voice in the crowd—Sam. Jack had to have pulled another Tehachapi team in.
There was no knowing how much time had passed—her senses were completely skewed by the situation, feeling like she had been here at least a decade. But the taut, dangerous energy abruptly lessened as more people applied themselves to it. Someone else shifted the bedrock that had been upheaved back into place, cutting the exposed air off, which helped significantly. Noriko went from feeling very exposed to just tenderized, as if she had been baking in the sun too long.
“Team Pathmaker!” Banderas boomed out. “Retreat to the van, take a break!”
Could they do that already? Noriko lifted her head to take a good look around her. Indeed, the ley line was still unstable, but not nearly as bad as it had been. They now had three new partners on the job and they were working steadily all up and down the line. She caught Sam’s eye, who was standing next to Teddy, and they both waved and gave her a thumbs up in reassurance.
Feeling better about letting go, she glanced up at Cameron. He was nearly bent over, hands on his thighs, breathing hard enough to make a person think he had just run a marathon. On a magical level, he had. He caught her eyes and somehow managed a smile. “Ready to quit?”
“Beyond ready,” she responded, voice creaking. She sounded like an eighty-year-old woman. Felt like it, too.
“On three, then. One, two, three.”
Noriko cut off all power flow and watched as Cameron put the last of it into the ley line behind them. Now it looked almost as it should be, flowing with energy and not lifeless.
Cameron sank to a knee, hand planted against the pavement to keep himself from completely falling over.
Recognizing the signs of power burnout, she struggled with her pack and dragged out a water bottle. “Drink something.”
“Gimme a second,” he panted out.
“No, now,” she insisted, nearly forcing the bottle into his mouth. “A swallow at least. You’re about ready to pass out.”
“Trust exercises,” he responded. “Your turn to catch me.”
“Harmony Cameron Powers, drink something right now,” she insisted, feeling a lump of fear climb into her throat.
“Ouch, full name, huh?” Finally, he stopped joking long enough to raise the bottle properly to his mouth. He started with a swallow, but soon tipped it back and drained half of the contents in one long pull.
There, that was better. He didn’t look as shaky or drained. Partially satisfied, she grabbed a power bar and stuck that in his hands too before finally seeing to herself. When he’d told her that 78 kilomerlins was his max, and that he could only sustain it for three hours before being “tapped out,” what he’d actually meant was before he passed out.
Clearly they needed to have a talk about unduly pushing his limits.
Jack hurried over to them, actually running, which was a very rare sight. Dropping to one knee, he looked them both over. “Neither of you faint on me.”
“Is that an order or a request?” Cameron managed around a mouthful of the power bar.
“Both.” He glanced at their hands and seemed relieved to find them refueling. “Glad to see you have some common sense, at least. Can you make it back to the van?”
Good question. Could she? Noriko pushed herself up to her feet and wobbled like an ungainly foal trying to find its legs for the first time.
“I’ll take that as a no.” Jack caught her around the waist. Her independent nature squawked at having a superior physically support her like this, but the sad truth of the matter was she could not be trusted on her own two feet. Just trying to stand had taken a lot out of her. Grabbing her arm, he put it around his shoulders, then reached for Cameron. “Up you go, Powers.”
“I can make it under my own power,” Cameron assured him.
“Don’t listen to him,” Noriko informed Jack. There were dark spots dancing in front of her eyes, a sure sign she had pushed herself too hard. She promptly drank more water and fought the urge to pass out.
Jack fortunately didn’t, just manhandled Cameron into leaning on his other side. If Cameron had been as fine as he was pretending, he would have been able to fight the man off, but of course he wasn’t, so Jack succeeded without much effort. Supporting both of them, he more or less frog marched them back towards the van.
To no one in particular, Cameron said fuzzily, “I now totally understand why this job comes with hazard pay.”
13th Merlin
It took a while for her body to recover enough that her mind could think. Noriko lay flat on the floor of the van, Cameron stretched out right next to her, close enough that their arms nearly overlapped. They were not the only ones, as Charlotte was on the bench above her, a cold cloth over her eyes. Their captain was sitting up in the doorway and exchanging words with Jack and anyone else that came by with a question. Noriko was 100% positive that it was sheer willpower keeping the man upright, and if he’d had the luxury, he’d be on the opposite bench from Charlotte.
They had to be wrong. All of their assumptions about the ley lines, the reasons why the ley lines had gone spastic recently, the time it took for that to happen, all of that had to be wrong. Because the first ley line that had gone out of control had been out of sight for nearly five days, they’d assumed it’d taken time for a power buildup. But this one had been well within sight of hundreds of people, as it was just off a main highway, and experts had seen it not eight hours before and all had been well. That suggested to her that time had nothing to do with it.
It also meant that this couldn’t possibly be natural, or a backlash from some minor quake, or anything else they’d thought of. Since their near escape with the other one, every team in the surrounding area had been almost anal about patrolling their ley lines. If they had been cautious before, every GF officer was downright paranoid now. If anything even remotely strange had happened, it would have been reported—Noriko had no doubt of that. They’d had two red herrings already and the explosion at the base had sent people into overdrive making sure they didn’t have a backlash from it.
So for this to happen? Without anyone being aware that it could? It simply wasn’t possible. Not naturally possible. “Someone’s doing this on purpose,” she concluded aloud.
Cameron let out a pained groan, sounding like a mountain with a bellyache. “She’s right.”
“I know she is.” Charlotte lifted up a corner of her cloth to peer over at Noriko. “We have a very short list of people who possess the ability to do this, and they’d have to be certifiable to even want to try. I certainly wouldn’t do it, even if I was crazy, as I risked blowing myself up in the process.”
That was very true. “We’re looking for someone with a suicide bomber mentality.”
“That’s exactly what we’re looking for.” Charlotte slumped back with a weary sigh. “You know what scares me most? My kids both had an away game today. Sometimes they play with Rosamond, which means they would have taken the highway this direction. It’s only chance they were going towards Bakersfield instead.”
Now that was worrying. “Ah, Charlie? Are your kids…?”
“Both Dwols.”
Noriko pictured two juvenile Dwolcræftas passing by a scene like this and winced. They would have become extremely sick being in the vicinity of this.
Banderas turned toward them. “This event is unfortunately a game changer. We’re going on high alert until we catch the SOB that is doing this.”
That didn’t surprise Noriko one little bit.
Cameron lifted his head a little. “Cap, I know that the Lab has more security and everything, but this doesn’t look like coincidence. I mean, if someo
ne could screw up this ley line so easily, stands to reason they could have done it at the Lab too.”
“Unfortunately it’s a very real possibility. We’re going to have to do some calculations and experiments to see how fast a ley line can be turned this volatile. I’ve already sent a message to Goudie about it.”
Of course he had. No matter what Jack’s complaints were about the captain’s inability to communicate properly, he never failed to give people the information they really needed to know.
“The other team has a handle on this now. We’re out of danger and into cleanup mode.” Banderas slapped a hand against the side of the van, the sound echoing and tired. “Pathmaker, load up. We’re off shift as of now and if I catch any of you at work tomorrow, I’ll fire the lot of you. Rest.”
He didn’t have to threaten her twice. She fully intended to.
How could she have possibly been so stupid? Noriko couldn’t believe she had done this to herself AGAIN.
Really, any fool would have been able to predict what would happen. She could have prevented this whole thing if she had taken even a split second to think about it. But seeing the situation at the weigh station had panicked her, and so she hadn’t thought at all. She’d reacted.
Which ended up with her having a fried phone, radio band, and Bluetooth. At least this time she could still get into her apartment, she hadn’t accidentally killed her door lock again.
Because of what she had put herself through for nearly three hours, Noriko’s usually excellent control was…not. In fact, one could describe it as nonexistent. Her inner bastion of power arced and sputtered so much that she knew that doing anything power-related for the next twenty-four hours was an extremely bad idea. It’s likely why the captain had banned them from coming into work the next day.
Taking extreme care, she touched the flat panel of her security system, letting it read her palm, and then waited with baited breath for it to key open. It did so with a quiet chime. Phew. She had to remember to set a verbal password for this thing later. That was a far safer option for her to use.
Call to Quarters (A Gaeldorcraeft Forces Novel Book 1) Page 13