Burden of Solace: Book 1 of the Starforce Saga

by Richard L. Wright

  As she recovered from the shock of her revelation, more questions swam in her mind.

  “If you knew I was an Unregistered, then why didn’t you just haul me in?”

  The big man at the window snorted a laugh. “Listen to her. Thinks she’s something, don’t she?”

  Alfaro smiled, but not in a happy-fun way. He stood up and walked over to her, forcing her to look even farther up.

  “Look, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but you’re small change. Healers don’t pose any real threat to anyone. Your kind are pacifists – warm and fuzzy, lover-not-fighter types. That’s why you got those kinds of powers in the first place. So, we’re not gonna waste time and energy locking you up for not filling out some paperwork. We don’t care about that. What we care about is that you people know your place.”

  “Our place?”

  “Yes. The whole purpose of the exohuman law is to make sure you exos remember that there are a lot more of us and we make the rules. Even Gorman, strong as he is, knows he can’t stand up to the entire US Government. He knows his place. And, from where I stand, I think you do too. At least now.”

  “So,” she asked, more to buy time than anything else, “this was all just to make a point? And you’re going to let me go?”

  The Enforcer shrugged.

  “Why not? It’s not like you’re packing any kind of punch. Weapons-grade exos we keep on a short leash. Like I said, if you had any offensive powers, you’d have used them already, and you wouldn’t be in this position.”

  He bent over her and ran a finger down her jawline, a motion that might have been called a caress under other circumstances. Here, it was simply another way to express his power over her. All her life she’d had to look up at people because of her height, but craning her neck up at this asshole was a cheese grater on exposed nerves. He gave her cheek a patronizing pat before returning to the couch.

  If it weren’t for the bracelets, I probably would have fried him by now.

  The thought froze in her mind - arrested in time, an insect in amber.

  They didn’t know about her blast powers. She’d only used them twice - in the hospital before they knew about her, and then deep in Nate’s subterranean chamber. Maybe she could use them to escape. Maybe she could get to Nate in time to stop him. Her eyes darted to the rocket boots. The problem was that Nate had done as she asked and blocked her from using her blasts, locked away the one thing that was her secret advantage. Even if she somehow managed to unlock those deadly energies, could she control them like Nate had believed? Or was she contemplating murdering these three men?

  “You guys have no idea what kind of mistake you’ve made.”

  That brought the sergeant to his feet and the shorter agent’s attention away from the window. Both of them placed a hand on the pistols at their waists. Cassie made a show of wriggling her arms in the manacles, twisting as if she were trying to slip free.

  “Nate’s a smart guy. Brilliant, in fact. He invents things. What is it you call him? A Gadgeteer?” She gave them a wicked grin as she twisted her wrists again.

  “The bracelets,” Alfaro said. “Get ‘em off of her, quick!”

  All three men converged on her. The big blocky one tried to immobilize her arms as the other two worked to undo the clasps and remove the bands from her wrists, a task hampered by the fact that they were partially covered by the manacles. She pretended to fight back, but inside she was fighting to control her emotions.

  Be calm, she thought to herself. Keep control.

  Once the bracelets were off, she would once again become the danger she feared, the thing she had begged Nate to undo. No matter how much she despised these men, she didn’t want to kill them. She focused on what Nate had said, about her blasts being used like a scalpel. She needed to visualize that same surgical precision and use it to keep her powers in check. All she wanted was to get away. Cassie reached out with the same senses that let her see inside people to heal them. It was a little like stepping outside her own body. She visualized the manacles around her wrists and waist and ankles. She tried thinking of them as foreign objects, like knives, that were creating a danger to her body. She zeroed in on the hinges and clasps as weak spots to be exploited. This would be a delicate procedure, requiring several things to happen at once.

  I can do this...

  “Got the right one,” Alfaro called out. He backed away, examining the inside surface of the bracelet. “Definitely some kind of circuitry here.”

  The shorter one pulled the left bracelet loose, ripping a strip of flesh off Cassie’s wrist in the process. She clenched her teeth, fighting for control even as her healing power dealt with the stinging wound. She felt the dampening fields from the bracelets fade away. The power rushed up and her vision began to flare as it surged. She concentrated on channeling it into the targets she had selected. She thought of lightning, forking into a half dozen bolts to strike those spots all at once.

  “Careful what you touch. I don’t see whatever trigger she was trying to activate.”

  She smiled again, this time for real.

  “That’s because they’re not the weapons. I am.”

  Zap.

  The manacles and belt fell away in a flash of white light. Cassie had to admire the training and reflexes of the three Enforcers. Even as their arms flew up to shield their eyes from the white flare, they each reached for their weapons in the same instant. Cassie yanked the collar away and concentrated on their pistols. All it would take was a tiny burst of high-energy plasma to fuse the trigger mechanism. If she went too far, she might ignite all of the ammunition at once. She said a little prayer and flicked her fingers outward.

  Snap.

  If she hadn’t been wincing in anticipation of explosions, she might have found comedy in the way they shook and slapped their useless weapons. But it only took a second of that for them to realize the futility. Two of them, Alfaro and the short one, dropped their gun-shaped paperweights and made the shift to a more physical solution. Unfortunately, Cassie hadn’t thought this far ahead. She honestly didn’t think the previous two tricks would work, much less what her end-game would be. The two men slammed her against a wall, and she felt a rib crack. She blocked the pain from it - a nifty trick she didn’t even know she could do - and concentrated on squeezing the carotid arteries of her three attackers. It was a bit like clamping off a bleeding artery during surgery except now her mind was the clamp. It was a slow solution, but it had the advantage of being non-lethal.

  The short guy and the big one went down quick. The sergeant must have figured out what she was doing because he grabbed her head and slammed it into the concrete wall. His other hand clamped around her throat. She saw stars, but knew she wasn’t seriously injured. She couldn’t predict the same for any subsequent blows, but his attack was keeping her from concentrating. If she didn’t find a way to end this, her survival instinct would take over and unleash the white fire she was straining to hold in check. He would be toast. She had come too far for it to end in her breaking that sacred vow.

  Fuck it. I’ll do this old school.

  Her right knee came up to nail his crotch with every gram of strength she could dredge up. Forget the punching bag - here was a target she could go for. He went down like a sack of onions, clutching his own with both hands. She only took time out for one gasping breath before pinching off the blood flow to his brain long enough to knock him out. She staggered away from the wall and quickly scanned the three men to make sure they were only unconscious.

  Time was running out. She needed to get to Nate, to stop him from making a mistake. Only after she retrieved the bracelets and snapped them back into place was she able to relax her control on the simmering fire inside her. She could only wonder how taxing it was for Nate to rein in his strength every second of every day.

  “God, please let me be in time,” she said as she stepped into the rocket boots. “And please don’t let me crash and burn in these things.”

  Sh
e started to move toward the elevator, awkward in the huge boots. Then she hesitated. With an irritated sigh, she stomped back and knelt down, cupping one hand against Alfaro’s groin. Her eyes glowed softly as a wave of green healing energy passed into him.

  “You’re welcome.”

  CHAPTER 25

  Her rocket-propelled flight was like a rollercoaster on steroids, except faster, higher, and far more dangerous. The boots only had one speed – bat-out-of-hell. She pointed her toes and they fucking went. Cassie doubted that even her healing power could pull her back from a head-first, full-on splat at rocket speed. She really wished she’d taken a minute to look for some sort of helmet, but there was no time. After overshooting the Atlanta Perimeter Highway on her first attempt, she decided to use only short bursts of speed from the boots. That first, blurred run had literally stripped skin from her face. She couldn’t afford to waste time repairing herself after every attempt. If there was a way to steer the things then it eluded her, so she ended up making a lot of course corrections between short bursts.

  She decided that Nate would first seek out Ballantine at his river house, the scene of the crime. Although she knew the location, finding it from the air proved a challenge. Moving at such great speed took practice, practice she didn’t have. She also didn’t have a lot of experience navigating the city from above. All of her flights to date had been at night and she had relied on Nate for getting around. It would be dark soon, and time was running out. She had almost given up hope when she spotted the Perimeter crossing the Chattahoochee River. A quick look toward the setting sun told her she was east of Cumberland Mall and the Galleria. Martin’s house was only a short distance downstream.

  She followed the river in a zig-zag path of sprints until she saw the cliffs where Ballantine’s house perched. As she approached, she could see the door to the deck was open. She glimpsed a figure in gray through the door. She aimed her body for that patch of gray and pointed her toes.

  The collision hurt. It hurt bad. Her healing kicked into high gear to reassemble her left arm and shoulder plus a handful of ribs. She’d barely grazed Nate’s right hip at an oblique angle, but he was pretty much an Immoveable Object and she wasn’t exactly an Irresistible Force.

  “Oh my God, Cassie. Are you okay?”

  She looked up and saw her face, warped and metallic. For a second, she thought she had shattered her head into some grotesque form that even she couldn’t fix, but it was only the curvature of Nate’s mirrored visor.

  “What are you doing here?” said the voice behind her reflected face.

  With a grimace, she flexed her left shoulder to make sure everything was back where it was supposed to be, then held up her right hand so Nate could help her up. Behind him, she saw the surprised face of Martin Ballantine. “You’re alive!” he exclaimed. “And you can fly?”

  Nate turned back toward the billionaire. His fist clenched as if to throw a punch. “Shut your mouth, Ballantine.”

  Cassie touched Nate’s arm, expecting to feel him relax, but he didn’t. He took a step toward Ballantine.

  “Thank God you’re alive,” Martin said. “You’ve got to help me. He’s here—”

  “To kill you,” she said, her voice level and cool. “I know.”

  That got Nate’s attention. His inner mask of anger and pain dropped away, giving way to shame. Cassie imposed herself between the two men.

  “Why’re you here, Cassie?” Nate said. “You’re supposed to be gone. You’re not supposed to...”

  “Not supposed to what? Not supposed to know that you’re willing to kill to protect me?”

  The visor angled away. Even helmeted, he couldn’t face her.

  “I didn’t want you to know.”

  “He’s crazy,” Ballantine shouted. “Call the police, the army... somebody!”

  “Shut. Up!” Cassie and Nate were unified in this response, if nothing else.

  “Cass, I’m under orders. If I don’t deliver him to the Enforcers, then they’re going to throw you in a cell. You want a normal life, and this is the only way I can give it to you. It’s a bargain with the devil, and I know you’ll never speak to me again, but that’s the price I have to pay.”

  Cassie could feel his anguish. This was real. All the emotional shields he had hidden behind had fallen. There, under it all, was something powerful. It was a bright stone at the center of all the negative emotions swirling around him. This thing, this rock, was his core. It was what drove him to protect others. This was what gave him his strength and shielded him from the damage he took on, even if it could do nothing to stop the painful consequences.

  “The Enforcers didn’t care about me. At least not until now. I was only a way for them to control you, to break you. But that’s over. They know about me now. Man, do they know about me.”

  The helmet tilted in confusion. She almost laughed at the sight of this powerful Guardian cocking his head like a puzzled puppy.

  “Three of them tried to take me hostage after you left. They said I was insurance to make sure you followed orders. Apparently, they didn’t know about my... other talent,” she said, holding up one hand. “They found out about it the hard way.”

  “Did you...”

  “No, of course not. They’re currently recovering from my version of a sleeper hold, but quite alive.”

  Nate’s emotions were a jumble. If she had to pick out one that dominated, she would have to say it was relief.

  “Cass, I can’t tell you how happy this makes me that--”

  “That you don’t have to commit murder? You’re welcome.”

  “And that you’ve come to terms with your abilities and accepted what you have as a gift, one you can control. Now we can work together, be a team. There’s so much we can accomplish--“

  “Whoa, whoa, WHOA. I never said anything about any of that. I came here to stop you from making a huge mistake, nothing more. You’re supposed to be a good guy. Good guys don’t kill. This changes nothing about me and my powers.”

  “But... You used them, controlled them. Now you know you can.”

  “And what? Walk around every minute of every day with a whole-body butt-clench to keep from blasting everything around me? And these bracelets, pretty as they are, aren’t really that much different from the manacles those Enforcers slapped on me.”

  She felt his bafflement as he spoke. “After everything, you still think you can just go back to your old life? Pretend nothing happened?”

  “All I know,” she said, “is that I won’t be a prisoner in my own body, and I won’t be a slave to some scheming politicians. I’m a doctor, a healer even without my powers. That’s what I want for my life. Why can’t I have that? Why am I not entitled to live my life my way?”

  His anger flared in her and she felt it slide into despair as the words tumbled from him in a cascade.

  “There was a plan. Leclair and I… We had it all worked out. All you had to do was run, as far and as fast as you could, and you’d have been safe – safe from XAC, safe from… from me.”

  She felt his crest fall. His disappointment was a heavy thing, filled with torment. It blended with her own and bound them together.

  “But the price, Nate,” she said softly. “The price was your soul.”

  His head angled down. She felt the intensity in his eyes even through his mirrored disguise. “You’re worth it.”

  She stepped closer to him, looking up and casting her sight beyond the visor. It showed her the man, not the Guardian. “Don’t put that on me. I can’t be the reason for you committing murder.”

  Caught up in their moment, neither one was paying much attention to Ballantine. Disregarded as a non-threat, he had inched around them, moving slowly into their orbit. Only at the last second did Cassie pick up Martin’s feeling of triumph. Too late, from the corner of her eye, she saw him reach out and grab onto Nate’s arm and shoulder.

  “This is sweet and all, but it’s time for plan B,” Ballantine grinned.


  CHAPTER 26

  Nate stiffened at Ballantine’s touch, but made no move to break the hold. Ballantine’s eyes had turned dark, like swirling black smoke. Was this how he took control of people? He hadn’t looked like this when he tried to dominate her.

  She grabbed Martin’s hands, struggling to break the connection, but it was like they were welded together. She looked deeper but what her inner sight showed her made no sense. There was something flowing between them across that bond - two somethings. A brightness was moving from Nate into Martin, while some sort of darkness was oozing into Nate. Whatever this was, it wasn’t good. Not knowing what else to do, she concentrated her awareness on the flow and surged her healing power into it. The dark and light streams became bathed in green.

  Then it all became chaos. The room seemed to spin, snapping through different angles in sickening jolts. She heard a strained moan and a harsh laugh. Nothing made sense. Then there was an explosion, or what felt like one. Something slammed Cassie, leaving her spent and confused on the floor. With difficulty, she opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was Nate, fighting to sit up. He shook his helmeted head, trying to shake something off.

  “Nate? Are you alright?”

  Her voice sounded strange, deeper. And deeply wrong. She tried to shift to her other sight, to make sure Nate wasn’t harmed, but nothing happened. She tried looking inward, but again there was nothing. Had she lost her powers? She looked down at the palms of her hands.

  “I... I don’t know. I feel strange, Cass.”

  The voice that answered wasn’t Nate’s. For starters, it sounded like a woman’s voice, and was vaguely familiar. Her next realization was that it hadn’t come from Nate. But all that paled next to the bizarre and confusing thing she was looking at now.

  Her hands - they were swollen. No, not swollen - meatier. The bracelets were gone and, in their place, a large diver-style watch, a Rolex with diamonds, encircled her left wrist. She turned them over and saw hair that continued up her arms. These were definitely not her hands.