“What kind?”
“Soviet special forces have raided the high school auditorium. They’ve got the entire sophomore class at gunpoint, including Janis, Tyler, and Scott.”
“Demands?” Steel asked.
“Scott’s going to message me as soon as he finds out.”
Steel spoke into her headset and listened to the response. “I have a team on site. They say there’s a delivery vehicle backed up to a service entrance at the rear of the auditorium.”
“Damn,” Kilmer muttered.
Steel raised her frostbitten eyes. “Do I send my team in?”
“No, not yet. Position them discreetly around the auditorium and on that van. Let’s go ahead and capture the emergency line. I don’t want the local police getting involved. I’ll alert the president. He may want to work the diplomatic channels, find out what in the hell they’re after.”
“Yes, sir,” Steel replied.
Kilmer blew out a frustrated breath. They hadn’t heard a peep from General Dementyev and the Soviets for months, and now this. His computer began to flash. “Wait,” he said, turning toward the screen. “Message from Scott. The hostage-takers are asking for the Champions by name.”
“Not good,” Steel said.
“No, not good at all.”
Kilmer supposed they had the man behind the Scale to thank. After all, he was the only one outside the Program who knew the Champions’ identities. He remained cloaked in mystery, however. Despite working on Titan for the last four months, Kilmer and the Program had yet to gain any useful intel on the kingpin’s identity, least of all his name and location.
“What’s our move, sir?” Steel asked.
Kilmer pinched his lower lip in thought before typing a message into his console.
“I’m going to see about getting someone in to help them.”
Coach Coffer placed a stay-put hand on Janis’s arm while Red Band reread the four names. When no one moved, Red Band nodded toward an armed man standing in an aisle beside the front row of auditorium seats. The girl sitting closest to him shrank away with a whimper.
“Take her to the back,” Red Band ordered. “Shoot her.”
Cries went up among the assembled students. But when the man went to grab the girl’s arm, Janis’s shield stopped him. He drew back in confusion, then tried again.
The students’ cries fell to questioning murmurs.
“That is enough,” Red Band called to his man. “The psionic is playing tricks. Hear this, Janis Graystone,” he boomed. “There is another assembly in your gymnasium. I have men there as well. If you and your friends do not present yourselves, I will order them to begin shooting.”
He’s bluffing, right? Scott asked.
It only took Janis a moment to project to the gymnasium and back.
No, he’s not, she said with a sick chill. And those students are too far away for me to really shield.
“You have three seconds,” Red Band said. He unclipped a two-way radio from his belt and raised it to his mouth. “Two…”
“I’m here!” Janis cried, shooting to her feet.
Red Band’s gaze found her. He strode over until he was towering above her, his lips bending into a thick smirk. She pushed into his thoughts to uncover who he was, his objective. But the man had obviously been trained in mental defense. His thoughts were cloaked, hard to read.
“Now.” He rapped his knuckles against the telekinetic field that surrounded her and the teachers. “Remove your protection.”
Janis feigned confusion with her face. She could feel the teachers looking on as though Red Band was speaking a foreign language. Remove your protection? She peered past Red Band’s shoulder to where Scott and Tyler had also stood and begun making their way toward the aisles, escorts awaiting them.
Red Band raised the radio back to his lips. “I am not going to count this time.”
Janis thought of her teammates and then of the teachers and students in the packed gymnasium.
Red Band spoke into the radio in Russian: “On my command.”
“All right, all right,” Janis said quickly.
There was nothing else to be done. With a thought, the shields fell away. Janis trembled as the cool air of the auditorium breathed across her bare arms.
Everyone was now defenseless.
4
As Scott received a shove in the back from the mercenary ordering him to the stage, Principal Munshin found his voice. “Surely, this needn’t involve the kids,” he stammered. The principal was sitting on the edge of his seat, hands fluttering. “Surely, we can talk about this!”
“I have nothing to say to you,” Red Band answered coldly.
He shouted an order in Russian. Two of his men prodded Principal Munshin and the rest of the teachers from the stage, herding them down into auditorium seats. The sudden pressure of a gun barrel between Scott’s shoulder blades pushed him toward the row of now-vacant chairs.
He and Tyler were forced into seats to Janis’s right, two chairs separating each of them.
What are our odds of taking them out? Scott asked. He didn’t have his laser helmet, but he and Tyler could disable their two-way radios while Janis dropped them with a series of mind blasts.
Without student casualties here or in the gymnasium? Janis replied. Not good.
And I’m not up for risking a blood bath, Tyler added. Any more messages from Kilmer?
Says he’s working on something, Scott answered.
One of the mercenaries wrenched Scott’s arms behind the chair back and bound his wrists. There went his link to command and control. The metal restraints tightened ratchet-like until his hands began to throb. Tyler and Janis were receiving similar treatment.
Kilmer’s gonna need to hurry it up, Janis said. This is going sideways fast, and these guys seem to know an awful lot about our pow—
A hard band was forced over Scott’s head, pulling his hair and cinching his temples. A force vibrated from the cold metal into his cerebral matter. He tried to communicate with Janis and Tyler, but their connection was out. He was having a hard time even concentrating. He peeked over at the other two and studied their halos. Neural scramblers. Scott tried to use his abilities to tap into his own scrambler but couldn’t. The thing was inhibiting his powers.
“Now,” Red Band said. “Where is the other girl? Where is Erin Chiras?”
Tyler’s chest tensed at the sound of his girlfriend’s name. He and Erin had begun dating shortly following her induction into the Champions Program at the beginning of the year. She was cool, shared his taste in music. She got him. Things had progressed to the point where he guessed they could be considered serious. Tyler’s one relief amid the hostage-taking was that she was safely in class.
So much for that.
“Erin Chiras?” Red Band repeated.
When no one answered, he barked another order. A dozen assault rifles took aim at the crowd. Tyler attempted again to gather atmospheric electricity to himself, but the metal band that had been slapped on his head seemed to prevent it. He couldn’t protect his classmates.
He could still vocalize, though.
“She’s not at school today,” he said.
Red Band stepped in front of him. Though he didn’t point a weapon, he appeared no less lethal, eyes staring through him. A menacing smell of oil and sweat radiated from his body armor.
“You are lying,” Red Band said. “We saw her come.”
“Then you saw wrong,” Tyler said, holding his stare.
Red Band spoke to the man beside him. The man pulled what looked like another radio from his belt, carried it down the steps, and thrust it toward Principal Munshin. The principal looked at the device a moment before accepting it.
“That is linked to your P.A. system,” Red Band said. “I want you to summon Erin to the auditorium. Tell her it is urgent. I do not need to explain the consequences should she fail to appear.”
Principal Munshin cleared his throat. The amplified sound reverberated from the sp
eakers mounted on the auditorium walls. “Erin Chiras,” he said after a moment, “this is your principal.” He hesitated, his small eyes wobbling over the mercenary’s pointed rifle. “Please report to the school auditorium immediately.” When he swallowed, he looked like he was about to lose his lunch. “Erin Chiras, please report to the school auditorium immediately.”
As the unsteady echoes of his voice died off, the auditorium fell deathly silent. Munshin rubbed a trembling hand over his grooved brow and handed the device back to the mercenary.
“Very good,” Red Band said. Then to Tyler, “We will see who the liar is.”
Janis closed her eyes, calmed her breathing, and filtered out the sounds around her. The device on her head, designed to inhibit her powers, was doing its job. But like the chips that protected the thoughts of officials in the Champions Program, the device was running off a processor—and Janis knew a trick.
Head throbbing, she concentrated into the processor’s intervals. Within moments, the lights of the astral plane began to flicker in and out of her awareness. She consulted her intuition.
Why are they here? What do they want?
The images came quickly, like she was viewing them through slats in a fence from a speeding train. A huge rocket emerged from an underground silo, smoke and gas billowing up, the landscape around it cold and barren. She caught glimpses of the slender rocket in flight, then, in a moment of inversion, she saw the world from the rocket’s perspective.
It was descending on the North American continent.
A missile launch, she thought in alarm. They’re preparing a missile launch.
Janis’s eyes flew open. That was the Soviet’s objective, their endgame. By detaining the Champions most powerful members, they were hoping to improve their odds of success.
Detaining? her intuition whispered back. Try executing.
The mercenary team was just awaiting Erin’s surrender.
Behind her back, Janis crawled her fingers over the buttons on her watch and punched out a blind message. She hoped it would be coherent. One of the main doors to the auditorium swung open. Heads throughout the assembly swiveled as the door clattered shut again. A student with copper blond hair, bangs cut into the shape of a scythe, descended the auditorium’s center aisle.
“Are you Erin Chiras?” Red Band asked.
Erin looked from the stage to the assembly of wide-eyed students and back. “Who’s asking?”
“Come up here,” he ordered. “Now.”
Janis hit send on her message.
Director Kilmer paced behind his desk, aware that Agent Steel was awaiting his directive. In the space of five minutes, the situation at the high school had gone from troubling to teetering on catastrophic. Not only were his charges being held hostage, a second assembly in the school gymnasium was under threat.
Kilmer needed to protect his team, but he was also under executive order to protect their identities—which meant no open displays of power. He had been tempted to ignore that order, but the point was now moot. With two separate groups of student lives in jeopardy, the Soviet team had taken the powers option off the table. Which meant his kids were in deep shit.
“Anything on the diplomatic front?” Agent Steel asked.
Kilmer stopped pacing long enough to consult his computer. “Still nothing. The Kremlin isn’t answering Washington’s calls. General Dementyev broke off communication months ago, and it seems he’s intent on remaining incommunicado. We have no idea what this group wants.”
“I could send my team into the auditorium,” she suggested again.
Kilmer shook his head. “Your people are more than capable, but if they failed to take out even one gunman…” He left the rest unsaid—about the massacre that would follow, about the hundreds of innocent teens who would die, not to mention four very unique ones.
The transceiver on his desk crackled. “I’m in the auditorium,” a voice whispered.
Kilmer’s eyes met Steel’s as they took seats on opposite sides of his desk.
“Go ahead,” Kilmer said.
“The Champs are seated on stage, hands behind them, devices over their heads, possibly scramblers.”
“Are you Erin Chiras?” a distant voice asked in a thick accent—the leader of the Soviet squad, Kilmer guessed.
At that moment, a new message began flashing on his computer. He rotated and studied the monitor. It was from Janis’s watch. Kilmer screwed his eyes up, trying to make sense of it.
> miss lunch
“New development?” Steel asked.
“I’m not sure.” He considered what he had just been told about conditions inside the auditorium and realized Janis had had to create the message behind her back, by feel. “Does ‘miss lunch’ mean anything to you?”
But in asking the question, the message became clear. The Champions weren’t the Soviet’s ultimate objective. They were a means to an end. Kilmer read the message again, his mind filling in the missing letters.
> missile launch
He banged out a communication to the White House. “The Soviets are staging a first strike,” he said to Steel. “They’re holding the Champions to keep us from detecting it, stopping it.”
“Are you sure, sir?”
Agent Steel’s voice touched an octave Kilmer had never heard. The new register accelerated the thudding in his chest. “It’s what Janis is picking up, and she’s rarely wrong.”
“What’s our move?” Steel asked, recovering her coolness.
“We need to get them the hell out of there.” He hadn’t stopped typing. “We’ll see if Janis can pinpoint the targets, communicate that information to U.S. Strategic Air Command.” He hit send on the White House message and immediately began a new communication.
If the Champions had to show their power hand, so be it. The time for caution was over. They would deal with the consequences later.
“I’ve got someone en route to the gymnasium,” he said, hitting send again.
He spun back to the transceiver on his desk. “What’s your status?” he asked, the message going to the earpiece of the Champion who had infiltrated the auditorium.
Kilmer released the button and waited, but no answer came. Only muffled voices and the sound of scuffling.
5
Tyler tried to establish eye contact with Erin as she descended the center aisle of the auditorium. He didn’t know whether Kilmer had been in communication with her, didn’t know whether she understood what she was walking into or about the gunmen in the gymnasium.
He watched her face change slightly as she took in the scene. It was a look of acknowledgment—all right, this is bad—but without worry, without fear. Tyler dug that quality in her. But now the same quality concerned him. He had trained with her enough in the last four months to know that she would take a chance if she believed she had even the slightest edge. It was a trait Agent Steel had been trying to train out of her, but without much success.
At last, her mahogany brown eyes met his. He gave a small, urgent nod: just go along for now, he hoped it said.
She nodded back in a way that was hard to interpret. Before Tyler could consider the gesture, two of the mercenaries seized Erin’s arms. They half-dragged, half-carried her toward the stage.
“Hey, what gives?” she cried, struggling against them.
Rage detonated in Tyler’s head. He tried to stand, but the wrist cuffs restrained him and his chair almost toppled. “Leave her alone!” he shouted. “She’s doing what you said! She’s complying!”
If not for his neural scrambler, he would have sent a few thousand volts through every one of those bastards. Red Band ignored his outburst. The men jerked Erin up the steps and brought her before him.
“It seems you have a fan section,” Red Band said to Erin. He took her chin between a finger and thumb and leaned forward. Erin’s lips tightened, but she refused to flinch or draw away.
The sight of him handling Erin was more than Tyler could bear. Sweat bled throug
h the back of his blue flannel shirt, but he couldn’t summon even a damn watt of power. He watched helplessly as Red Band’s lips came to within an inch of Erin’s. But before they touched, he jerked her chin so he was peering into her left ear, the side on which her hair was shaved.
… the hell? Tyler thought.
Erin grunted when he jerked her head the other way. A broad blade of hair covered her right ear, which Red Band pushed rudely aside. He leaned nearer, like a doctor peering through an otoscope. Removing his glove with his teeth, he dug a finger into her ear. A second later, he was pinching what Tyler recognized as a transparent transceiver. Erin had been wired.
Red Band contemplated the device. “Clever girl,” he remarked.
He crushed the earpiece between his finger and thumb, released Erin’s jaw, and backhanded her across the face. The sound landed so solidly in Tyler’s gut that he was barely conscious of the gasps in the auditorium. Tipping his chair forward onto its front legs, he took a jerking hop. His gaze was fixed on the back of Red Band’s left knee. He was going to land a kick, blow the crap out of his ligaments.
Even if it got him killed.
The butt of a weapon cracked into Tyler’s side. He went over, the stage’s wooden floor hammering the side of his face. Jackboots came in next, opening deep, deadening bruises throughout his body. One kick caught him in the temple. Lurid red lights streaked across his sight. More screams sounded from the auditorium.
By the time he was righted, Tyler could taste blood from his split lips.
Red Band stared down at him dispassionately. “One more outburst and I will have everyone shot. Starting with your girlfriend.”
Tyler managed to loll his head around to where Erin was now fastened to a chair, one of the devices placed over her temples. Her face came into focus, and she was giving him the same stay calm nod he had given her earlier. Then her eyes did something subtle but unusual.
Tyler felt one side of his bloody mouth tilt upward.
I’ll be damned, he thought.
XGeneration 7: Dead Hand (XGeneration Series) Page 3