“What can we expect upstairs?” Titan asked, his words slurring less now.
“Not sure,” Jesse lied. “But you’re not in much condition to fight. Leave the brawlin’ to me.”
“Forget that,” Titan said, cracking his giant knuckles.
Jesse had positioned himself so he’d be the first one out. The elevator stopped. “Stay behind me,” he warned.
Titan had no time to protest. As the door slid open, laser fire streaked through. Where they hit Jesse’s exposed skin, the shots burned like tiny needle pricks. Jesse roared as he leapt out, swinging a fist around. He came within inches of the two guards. They vaulted back on cue and fell still, Jesse’s hulking body blocking the theatrics from Titan’s scrutiny.
“The door!” Jesse called, pointing toward a blast door off to their left that was swinging closed—another step in a choreographed sequence to keep them moving.
Jesse lunged ahead of Titan and jammed his fingers between the massive metal door and its frame. Grunting, he heaved it open. Four guards backpedaled amid a fresh issuance of laser fire. Jesse charged through them like a wrecking ball and left them groaning in his wake. He wheeled around and seized Titan’s arm just as he was reaching for one of the guards.
“No time,” Jesse said. “If we can make it up those stairs, we’re free.”
He half led, half pulled Titan up the broad ramp of stairs. Where the ramp ended at a ceiling, Jesse punched a sequence into a keypad.
“Squeezed the combo from one of the guards,” he explained.
As the Program had hoped, Titan’s arousal from a gas-induced sleep coupled with his and Jesse’s constant movement was stunting his ability to analyze the improbability of their escape. He blinked up as a pair of metal storm doors slid apart. Dusk fell through tree tops and onto his grinning face. He and Jesse finished ascending and stepped out into an expanse of woods.
“I’ll be damned,” Titan murmured, inhaling the moist, free air.
Off to their right, a double-track dirt road wound past. Several Program vehicles were parked along it, including a black van: their ride.
Jesse led the way, tromping through undergrowth and onto the dirt road. He tried the doors, finding the sliding door on the side unlocked. The Program had removed the van’s back seats to accommodate Titan. Jesse entered first, then hauled Titan inside by an arm and closed the door behind him. Titan sat against the rear windows, crouched over, knees drawn in.
“Gonna be able to start this thing?” he asked.
Jesse wedged himself into the front seat, which was slid back, and tore the casing from the steering column. The van’s ignition was already primed. Jesse grunted as he twisted a pair of dangling green wires into a sparking coil, as the agents had taught him.
The engine rumbled to life.
“Hell, yeah!” Titan called from the back.
Jesse threw the car in gear and started forward. A dozen-odd agents would be keeping track of them, including overhead in a stealth chopper. To be extra cautious, the Program had also pasted a tiny transparent tracer to Titan—dead center of his back, where he couldn’t see or reach it.
Overkill, if they asked Jesse. But no one had asked.
“Where we headed?”
“A payphone,” Jesse said.
“Payphone?”
“I kept up my end of the deal. I got us out.” He found Titan’s face in the rearview mirror. “Now you’re gonna keep up yours and get us somewhere safe.”
Command and control
“He’s dialing,” Scott said, closing his eyes.
Scott had captured the payphone beforehand, one located at a shuttered gas station just outside of town. Judging from what the bugs had picked up inside the van, it didn’t seem Titan’s suspicions had been aroused by Jesse’s insistence on the location. And now Titan was punching a secure number to the Scale kingpin to request a safe house for him and Jesse.
When electronic tones sounded, Scott concentrated into the connection. He felt Kilmer and Janis pressing nearer, Janis linking with him telepathically, enhancing his powers. Scott followed the signal: Gainesville to Jacksonville, along a major trunk line to Atlanta and then down another to D.C. Within milliseconds, the signal was cascading through a series of secure loops.
Arlington, Virginia, Scott said to Janis.
Which means there’s a good chance it is someone in the defense industry, she said back.
Maybe Schwartz, Scott agreed.
A click of the call being answered.
“That you?” Titan asked after a moment.
“I don’t know whether to congratulate your cunning or chastise your stupidity.” The voice was male but disguised by digital manipulation. Naturally. “Either way,” the man continued, “you’re free.”
Scott drilled down further until he had the specific building the call was being received in. He converted the information to a physical address, which Janis began to write down.
“Yeah, had a little help,” Titan was saying.
“That’s good, because I have work for you.”
“Anything, Boss. But look, we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere. We could really use a lift.”
“I have your location. A team will be there shortly.”
“I owe you, Boss.”
Titan’s breaths sounded for several cycles, as though he was awaiting a response, but the kingpin had disconnected the call. Scott removed his helmet and blinked his surroundings back into focus.
“What did we learn?” Kilmer asked.
“A team will be picking them up shortly,” Scott said. “We’ll just need to—”
Agent Dutch broke into the computer room. He had been promoted to head of security once again, following the revelation that Agent Steel was concealing information, possibly—no, probably—related to her role as informant for the Scale. He approached them at a fast walk.
“Sir, we’ve lost contact with our team.”
Director Kilmer stood. “What do you mean?”
“We were in communication one moment, and in the next we weren’t. We haven’t been able to reestablish contact.”
“An equipment malfunction?” Kilmer ventured. But Scott knew as well as he that they had several redundancies for their communication system, especially during vital missions.
“I’m afraid not,” Dutch answered. “According to positional locators, their vehicles, as well as the helicopter, appear to have been incapacitated. They’re no longer moving. I have a team assembling. In the meantime, I was hoping Janis could try to connect with the surveillance team. See if she can pick up some—”
“They’re … dead,” Janis said, her dark eyes opening in a face gone ashen.
“Dead,” Agent Dutch repeated tersely. “All of them?”
Janis nodded. “I’m sorry.”
“That must mean they were ambushed,” Scott said, his voice sounding faint through the fog of his own shock. “What about the bugs and locators in the van? The tracer on Titan’s back?”
Kilmer turned back to the computer. “The van is at the gas station, but I doubt Jesse and Titan are still in it. The team that ambushed the surveillance units have probably picked them up by now. And Titan’s tracer doesn’t appear to be putting out a signal anymore.”
“But how could the kingpin have gotten a team there so quickly?” Scott asked.
“The Scale was monitoring Jesse and Titan,” Kilmer said. “Agent Steel hadn’t known the details of the escape plan, or even that it was being executed tonight, but she’d been in on earlier discussions about letting Titan walk. She could well have fed that information to the Scale before being locked away.”
The idea that Agent Steel had been acting as a mole, all while preaching her gospel of Program and Professionalism, continued to burn in Scott. His thoughts flipped back to their teammate.
“Is Jesse…?”
“Still alive,” Janis answered, the skin between her eyebrows wrinkling in concentration. “And he doesn’t seem to be any w
iser as to what’s happened. He still thinks the plan is on. But there’s growing interference around him. I can’t pinpoint his location.”
“So, until we find him, he’s on his own,” Scott concluded.
And with only three hours left until they had to turn those disbursement codes over to Schwartz at Viper, they were no closer to ascertaining who the kingpin was. Then Scott remembered something that had become lost in the revelation of the surveillance team’s demise.
“An address!” he blurted out. “We have an address for where the kingpin received Titan’s call.”
Janis twisted back around to the piece of paper on the console, seeming to remember, too. She slid the paper over to Director Kilmer, who picked it up, already examining what she had written.
“Arlington,” he muttered, then stopped. His face tilted in confusion. “I worked at this address. This building once housed the offices for the Champions Program.”
20
Jesse turned from Titan, who had just hung up the telephone. Engines were approaching. He raised a forearm to block the bright headlights sweeping over the busted-up lot and derelict pumps. The lights came from a pair of white vans, the kind used to haul cargo. Faded business logos adorned their sides. The first van remained near the pumps while the second rolled to a stop behind the Champions van.
“These your people?” Jesse asked.
“C’mon,” Titan said, striding toward the idling van.
Jesse lowered his head to see better, but the van’s front windows were tinted black. Uncertainty knotted his stomach. He hesitated before falling into step behind Titan. He supposed the surveillance team was still out there. And they would have the tracer on Titan’s back, too.
Titan opened a pair of doors at the rear of the van and stepped inside. The cargo bay was large. Titan took a seat on the left side. Jesse sat opposite him, legs crossed at the ankles. Through a small window, he made out the silhouette of two people in the front seats.
“Thanks for the lift,” Titan called, pulling the back doors closed with a bang.
Neither the driver nor passenger turned his head to answer. The back lacked windows to see out through. Jesse felt the van circle the pumps and then accelerate as it joined the county road.
“So, you’re the B team, huh?” Titan asked, his booming voice edged with condescension. When no answer came, he muttered, “Yeah, you’re gonna learn who’s running the show real quick.”
In the darkness of the van’s cargo bay, his good eye gleamed over at Jesse. A companionable whack landed against Jesse’s knee. “You did good, kid. Didn’t think you were gonna give me another chance. I’m glad you did. I’m gonna make it up to you, too. Everything’s coming through us this time, understand? No one makes a decision involving you without our say so.”
The sincerity in Titan’s voice bothered Jesse. He lowered his eyes. The van rumbled on. “Where are they taking us?” he asked after another minute.
“Boss man didn’t say.”
“Can we trust him?”
“Hey, he’s kept his word for as long as I’ve known him. We’re talking twenty-five years and counting.”
“What if he thinks you talked?” Jesse asked.
“Naw, if I’d talked, the Champions would’ve been all over him. Plus, he’s got someone inside your program. If I wasn’t being a good soldier, his informant would’ve told him.”
Jesse knew “his informant” meant Agent Steel—Kilmer had briefed him that afternoon—but Jesse kept quiet. Better the Scale didn’t know the Champions had succeeded in rooting her out. Might make the kingpin suspicious of Jesse’s involvement in Titan’s breakout.
“I’m telling you,” Titan went on, “the boss knows his stuff. Balancing. He understands it better than anyone—certainly better than your old handlers. It’s what’s kept the world in one piece since W.W. Two. Now you’ve got the Soviet Union on the ropes and the world on the brink of a catastrophic mess. The boss is trying to fix that. First he’s gotta take care of the Champions. Nothing personal, you understand. If I had the power to change your teammates’ minds, I’d do it like that.” He snapped his thick fingers. “Spare us the battling and bloodshed. But there’s just no getting your old outfit to grasp the bigger picture. No talking them out of playing the good guys. I mean, if you were told you had to kill one person to save one million, you’d do it, right? Well, that’s what I’m telling you. That’s what it’s gonna take.”
Jesse watched Titan’s hulking silhouette, wondering how much the man actually believed.
“Quit worrying yourself. We’re gonna be all right.” Titan grasped the knee he had whacked earlier and shook it. “Hell, we’re gonna be better than all right. With the boss’s money, our might, and whoever these guys are backing us, the world’s gonna bow to us. Not the other way around.”
Once more, Titan’s sincerity bothered Jesse. He turned toward the small window. The two silhouettes up front continued staring straight ahead. The one in the passenger seat had an abnormally large head. Jesse wondered if he was a Special and what his powers were. He wondered how many were in the other van. He started thinking ahead to when he would have to take these guys out, including Titan. He turned back to his father’s giant silhouette.
Yeah, father. There was little doubt in his mind anymore.
“Whatever you say,” Jesse grumbled.
Titan’s teeth gleamed in a flash of headlights, and he began cracking his knuckles. In their tight space, the loud pops echoed like gunshots. Jesse’s gaze fell to his own hands. With the reminder that the Champions knew where he was, that he would soon have reinforcements, he relaxed his shoulders and sat back as the van rumbled toward their destination.
Janis could smell the wreckage even before the burning cars appeared below, tiny roadside pyres. She was riding shotgun in the middle of a line of imitation police cruisers and several flatbed trucks. Scott let out a whispered curse as he eased off the cruiser’s gas. It was Scott who had requested they join the salvage mission to see if they could pick up Jesse’s trail before it went cold. Director Kilmer would follow up on the lead to the building in Arlington.
“Is that what I think it is?” Scott asked, peering past Janis.
She turned her head. Far off to the right, in an open stretch of field, something else was burning. Amid the psychic residue, Janis felt the two lost lives. She nodded. “The stealth chopper.”
Several cruisers pulled ahead to secure the accident scene on the road, their red and blue lights reflecting from Scott’s glasses. “What are you picking up?” he asked.
“You were right about the ambush. The agents’ deaths were sudden. Unexpected. As for the perpetrator…” Janis interpreted the astral lines and lingering auras. “Looks like we’re dealing with another Special.”
“Someone like us?”
“Yeah, only more … mutant-y, if that makes sense. I’m not feeling a lot of humanity.”
“So, there is another Scale team.”
Janis could feel Scott’s unease. “A reserve team,” she reminded him. “There’s a reason they weren’t called up to the battle back in January.”
“Reserve or not, they took out a surveillance unit without a fight.” Scott pulled the car over, rolling to a stop about fifty yards behind the last of the three burning cars. Despite their distance from the flames, Janis could feel the heat through the windshield and against her face. “We can’t afford to underestimate them,” Scott went on. “Especially now that they have Titan back.”
Janis hadn’t been underestimating them as much as taking honest stock of her own abilities. Back in January, she hadn’t been able to go on offense while also maintaining a defensive shield. Now she could do both and probably solve a Rubix’s Cube while she was at it. Titan, whose abilities were purely physical, wouldn’t stand a chance against her. But she decided not to tell Scott any of this. Her intuition suggested it would only make him worry about her growing powers, which, quite frankly, were worrying her more and more.
She opened her door and stepped out onto the road’s weed-choked shoulder. Scott joined her at the front of the cruiser. They looked on for a moment as agents extinguished the fires. Smoke billowed from the charred husks. Janis closed her eyes until images began to appear.
“White vans,” she said, “made up to look like business vehicles. Two of them passed here about a half hour ago. They caught up to the surveillance cars, the helicopter. And then they just…” She went back over the confusion of images. “They just exploded. The white vans barely slowed.”
“Rocket launchers or something?” Scott asked.
Janis shook her head as she picked up a drift of conversation from the agents at the vehicle ahead of them. “Looks like the explosion originated in the tank,” one of them was saying.
“A fire starter,” Janis said in answer to Scott’s question.
“Fire starter?”
“The mutant presence I picked up earlier. He excited the gasoline in the tanks, caused them to ignite. The agents wouldn’t have known what hit them.” Blinking back tears, Janis formed a mental barrier to defend against the sudden tide of emotion. There would be time for that later.
Scott touched a hand to her low back. “Now that we have some idea of who we’re dealing with, how about we head over to that gas station payphone, see if we can’t pick up a trail?”
Janis nodded and communicated the plan to the other agents.
The gas station was only a couple of miles from the carnage site. Scott pulled into a space at the same boarded-over building Jesse and Titan would have been standing in front of not thirty minutes earlier. The Champions van was parked to one side, its sliding door open. Janis got out and found the abandoned payphone, its metal stand bolted into concrete.
“I’ll see if I can feel anything,” she called back.
She touched the hard plastic receiver, still slick with oil from Titan’s hand, and opened herself to whatever energies remained. For reasons she didn’t entirely understand, the past seemed to have a mind of its own. Sometimes it chose to visit her; other times it stayed far away.
XGeneration 7: Dead Hand (XGeneration Series) Page 11