He looked me in the eye. “I’m not Beau. I’m not going to betray you. Because that’s what older brothers do to you, isn’t it? They betray you, and attack you when your back is turned.”
The gun clattered to the floor.
Reuben kneeled next to me while I began sobbing without a sound.
My body shook from the magnitude of everything that had happened in the last few weeks. Wherever I looked, I had lost—my lover, my family, my happy team, my sense of security and self, my promising future.
All I had left was myself. Me, with a gun in my hand and blood on my face.
My memories flitted back to Liberty, to that terrible night when the Westerners had attacked. Reid had seen Ember’s supposedly dead body and made a grab for someone’s weapon. I’d assumed that he was going to run out of the building and seek violent revenge.
I now knew what he’d meant to do.
Reuben must have followed my line of thinking, because he picked up the revolver and tucked it into his pocket before pulling me to my feet. “Let’s go get Ember, and then we’ll call Reid and tell him to calm the hell down.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think I’ve spent half my life telling him to calm down.”
He motioned for me to step through the window, but I faltered. “Can you at least help me see what’s behind the door? Beau is coming for the JM-104. Ember said so.”
Reuben simply held up his palm. A black, shadow-like hammer took shape in the air by the door and slammed against the lock, breaking it. The door swung open.
It was a bathroom.
I hung my head while Reuben steered me out of the office.
Neither of us spoke much as we walked down the dark, carpeted hallway towards the double doors Ember had gone through.
Before we passed through them, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number from memory, holding up a finger to me.
“Hey, Captain, it’s Obsidian. I’ve just gotten a strong lead about the Bell lab. Call me back as soon as y—”
He frowned and stared at his phone.
“What is it?” I asked.
“My phone just went dead, but I’m sure it was at full power.” He tapped the screen a few times and pressed the home button, but it stayed black. He gave his head a little shake. “That’s weird. Do you have your phone on you?”
I took out my cell phone and pressed the home button so I could type in my passcode.
My phone was also dead.
The leaden weight of dread took form in my chest opposite the grief there. “I’m positive my phone was at full power, and this thing is built to last.”
We both stared at the useless device in my hand until Reuben said, “Do you believe in coincidence?”
I shoved the phone back in my pocket. “Not right now.”
A faint, high mechanical whine behind us made me tense, then slowly turn around and look up. A security camera in one corner had swiveled around on its mount and was now looking directly at us.
The camera by the double doors began to turn with the same slow whine, stopping when we were directly in its sights. A third, above a closet door, turned all the way around to face us.
I closed my eyes and swallowed, listening.
Reuben put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
I slowed my breathing, focusing on the beat of my heart.
It matched the war drums outside.
Reuben and I almost tumbled over each other in our desperate race to get to the basement. We thudded down the stairs two at a time.
“Ember!” I shouted, flinging a door open. “Where are—”
“Here!” she shouted from a small side room. I sprinted in just as she slammed a filing drawer shut. “Dead end,” she said quickly. “I can hear the people in the helicopter.” She shot a fearful look at the ceiling. “Oh, God, this is going to be a long night.”
“I’m guessing it’s not the cavalry up there,” Reuben said. He swallowed. “What are we dealing with?”
She gritted her teeth. “Two people are listening to music, probably to keep me away from their thoughts. Someone else is there, too…someone named…Avery, I think.”
I swore aloud. “I know him.”
Avery Hensey would’ve been given to the camp allies if he’d been born into a camp family. Instead, he’d been born into the Hensey clan, and they’d made up for his lack of powers by turning him into a firearms aficionado. He’d even trained my siblings and me at one point.
I slipped my shaking hand into my pocket and groped around for extra bullets, but found nothing.
I had six shots in my revolver.
This was going to be a long night.
Ember threw back her shoulders. “There’s another helicopter on the way. They can see our footsteps in the snow, and they’re spoiling for a fight.”
Reuben squared his shoulders. “Then let’s give them a hell of a fight.”
Item Twenty-Six
A diary entry written circa December 1969 by Miss Lorraine Hotchkiss, aged 12, resident of Chatsworth, Georgia.
Dear Diary,
I wish the men would stop building that wall even on Sundays. The hammering and metal sounds are so loud! The noise echoes around the valley and wakes me up. Mom says nothing good ever happens when a wall like that goes up.
Love,
Lorraine
26
The doors were the first to go.
Wind, far more ferocious than I’d ever seen, ripped the thin metal bay doors off their tracks with a metallic screech and flung them away across the parking lot.
The blast of wind that entered the storeroom brought with it icy cold and...water drops. Moisture clung to my skin and clothes, seeping into my bones. This wasn’t just some wind elementalist, but someone who could make storms. I knew too damn well who it might be.
“Aw, come on,” I said myself, my teeth chattering. “It just had to be you, didn’t it?”
I dared to peek over the fifty-five-gallon plastic drum to confirm my suspicions, then winced. Yep, it was her. And she’d brought friends.
Wendy Chakrabharti sauntered into the storeroom, headphones on her ears and her usual smirk on her face. Long, wavy black hair tumbled down her shoulders, somehow untouched by the gales she was generating. My brother’s ex-girlfriend still artfully lined her eyes with kohl and wore velour designer clothes from head to toe.
She blew a little pink gum bubble and popped it with a perfectly polished fingernail. How very Wendy.
Two men flanked her. As I’d guessed, Avery Hensey was armed to the teeth, bearing two automatic weapons and plenty of smaller handguns. With belts of ammunition looped around his chest, he looked ready to go into battle, and even at the distance I could see the crazed bloodlust in his eyes.
A shorter, slightly chubby guy stood on the other side of her, and he looked as nervous as the other two did confident. Like Wendy, he also had headphones on. The man looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Perhaps he’d been at a family affair when I was young?
“Terrence Edge,” Ember whispered suddenly. “Ben, what’s he do?”
I narrowed my eyes. That’s how I knew him—he was an Edge, one of the core families in my old world. I elbowed Reuben. “Power mimic. Don’t let him touch you. He’s probably already gotten a hook on her power and is doubling what she can do.”
“What’s she doing?” Reuben whispered. He leaned forward. “Ben, can you charge them while I attack?”
Ember held up a hand. “Wait. They want to flex muscles, but not necessarily engage with us. This doesn’t have to end with blood. They’re waiting for us to do something first.”
I nodded in confirmation, and Reuben settled back, though warily. “Remember, these aren’t superheroes,” I said quickly. “I was taught to run, to hide, and to wait. So were they.”
Wendy pulled up the hood of her down jacket and raised her hands, her eyes aglow with whitish-yellow energy. Clouds—actual visible clouds—formed in the high ceiling of the st
oreroom, their bottoms enveloping the highest level of the shelving as they churned. Dangerous rumbles of thunder rippled, and the wind picked up.
I’d called her Windy Wendy when we were kids. She’d called herself Tempeste.
“Come out with your hands up, Benjamin! Or everyone dies!”
I didn’t move. Cartoonish trash talk didn’t scare me. I needed her to get cocky and make a mistake—and then I would strike.
“You asked for it, you little traitor!”
Her eyes flared, and the real tempest began.
Gusts of wind shook the shelves and light fixtures, making everything in the room that wasn’t bolted down sway from side to side. Freezing rain began to fall, coating everything with icy water droplets that soaked into my already-damp clothes.
A huge shelf bearing boxes and drums wobbled. Then it fell to the side—right onto another shelf.
Shelves began to fall like dominoes, crashing everywhere. Drums sprang open, spilling God-knew-what over the floor, the oily substances and colored liquids mixing with the water from the rain. Small explosions of sparks and electricity popped in and out of existence as various machines hit the cement floor or power boxes on the wall.
The three of us ran in three different directions to escape the maelstrom of falling shelves. Reuben and I eventually dove behind another row of drums that had survived the shower of barrels and boxes, skidding to a halt on our knees.
After a few seconds, Ember landed on me, clutching her head. “That stupid music is making it so hard to confuse them.”
I raised my eyebrows. Really? You’re foiled by music?
Yes! Now is not the time for this conversation!
Wendy marched sideways toward a stairwell, Terrence following her. Avery moved along with her, his head swiveling as he looked for us.
He caught my eye.
“Rube! Shield!”
His bullets hit Reuben’s shield with a terrific clang, flying every which way. Reuben was on his feet immediately, his black eyes menacing and strong, his composure never breaking.
“Get Ember to safety!” Reuben shouted over the roar of the indoor storm.
The wind increased, knocking Ember and me sideways. The rain began to fall harder and colder, slicking the cement floor and making it difficult to steady myself. I reached out for Ember’s hand, but she pulled away.
“I can distract him for just a second!” she shouted over the spray of bullets. “Ben, now!” She closed her eyes.
Avery paused, his forehead furrowed in confusion at whatever Ember was doing.
I dashed at him—and lost my purchase a few feet from where he was standing. I slid into his legs at top speed, sending him sprawling into a complicated tangle of shelves, soggy cardboard, and a sticky substance that clung to our clothes.
Fists, skin, teeth, and howls of pain merged together as we fought. I swung for his chin, but missed. He tried to grab a sidearm, but I brought down a random piece of metal shelving onto his hand and crushed it. He screamed.
The wind picked up again, and in the corner of my eye, Wendy and Terrence ran up the rest of the stairs. The swinging lights created a strobe effect.
“Ben, move!” Reuben’s shout was barely audible.
I moved—and a large piece of machinery fell right where I’d been, crushing Avery’s right leg.
I cut off his agonized scream with a bullet to the forehead.
More bullets rang around me, one even riffling my hair above my ear. Terrence was shooting at me from the overhead walkway. I rolled under a felled piece of metal and kicked a box in front of me, cutting off his line of sight.
The wind finally knocked the power out. The entire storeroom went to black. I let out a sigh of relief; we were safe for now.
The wind died down, though the rain didn’t stop. Wendy was probably rethinking the “knock stuff on them” part of her plan, since she’d accidentally killed Avery and cut the power.
“Over here,” Reuben hissed from somewhere behind me. I groped around in the inch of icy water, felt nothing, and scooted backwards until I bumped into him.
“What now?” I whispered into the darkness, just audibly enough so he could hear me. “Where’s Ember?”
“I don’t know. Ember? You there?”
Nothing.
“We’ll find her later,” I whispered. She had decent survival instincts, so she’d probably run for the basement. I couldn’t blame her. “Rube, did you get a good look of where we are in relation to the stairwell?”
“Yeah, why?”
“If you blast everything on the floor with your power, I can run up the stairs at top speed and bum rush them.”
“That sounds risky.”
“It is, but look at the situation. This isn’t a strike team, these are my brother’s drinking buddies. They’re angry, and I’m willing to bet that they’re scared. They may just see me as Bleeding Heart Benjamin, but they see you as an actual bona fide superhero. They’re crapping their pants right now. Let’s just finish this, grab Ember, and get out of here.”
I heard him swallow. “Okay. That’s as good of an idea as any.” Cold hands groped around for my face, angling it to my ten o’clock. “That way. On my order.”
A weird glowing blackness—or rather, two spots of it—became apparent where Reuben’s voice was coming from. I stood to a crouch, coiled to spring.
I sensed more than saw his arms spreading wide. The cacophonous sound of metal and water sliding along the wet, grainy cement floor filled the entire storeroom, and then ceased.
“Now!”
I sprinted at normal speed to where I thought the stairwell was, my wet footsteps echoing loudly as I ran unhindered by debris. My hand touched the metal railing and I planted my foot on the bottom step, ready to—
A muzzle flash.
Excruciating, white-hot pain shot up my thigh and into my torso, stunning me as I fell to the ground. Warm wetness leaked out of my leg above the knee, clashing oddly with the freezing water I was lying in.
“Are you dead yet?” Wendy called from the inky darkness above me. “Please tell me you’re dead.”
That had been a stupid move. They’d heard me run and then stop at the bottom of the stairwell.
That had been a stupid, stupid move.
Reuben, at least, had the sense to not shout and ask if I was still alive. Instead, after a few seconds, something grabbed my collar and pulled me along the floor until I was by him again, leaning up against a barrel.
“Shot,” I gasped.
“Yeah, I figured that,” he whispered. He swore colorfully. “This is the worst fight I’ve ever been in. Talk about a moronic last st—battle. This is a moronic battle.”
He’d stopped himself from saying the truth: a last stand. And if the brave, true captain of the Baltimore team thought so, it was.
Lovely. I was making my last stand in a freezing, dark, wet hole. We barely knew each other, my wife was dead, I didn’t know if my other teammates were still alive, I was shot, and Gabriela was probably going to be a widow before the sun came up.
I had the power to fix exactly one of those things.
I swallowed down the pain that was pulsing steadily in my leg. “Rube.”
“What?”
“Go home.”
“Oh, don’t start.”
“No, go home. There’s a bunch of fire exits down the hall. Make a big noise and it’ll disguise your footfalls.”
“Trent. Stop talking.”
Stupid Fischers and their stupid pride. “Go home to Gabby. Be happy. Die old. Don’t—” I bit my hand to stifle a groan of pain. When the worst had passed, I continued, “Don’t put her through the nightmare I’m living right now.”
There was a long silence, and all I could hear was the steady artificial rainfall, each drop echoing oddly in the semi-flooded room. The two freaks up on the walkway were waiting for something, a realization that made my stomach fill with heavy dread.
He was coming.
Finall
y, Reuben spoke, his voice low with an emotion I couldn’t place. “You were going to be a soldier. Reid told me so after you took over your team at Jen’s apartment. I asked him if you were up to the task, and he said you’d been made the cadet commander of your high school’s JROTC program.”
I shifted painfully. “Yeah, so? What’s this got—”
“I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. What’s the next line of the soldier’s creed?”
“Why—”
“What is the next line of the solider’s creed, Trent? Answer me.”
“Screw you. Go home and have a happy life. Consider this repayment for, you know, everything. I really am sorry for shooting Berenice. Please tell her that.”
I’d shot her about ten feet from where I was sitting. It was fitting that I’d probably get my comeuppance here.
“If you don’t tell me the next line, I’m going to punch your gunshot wound.”
“I will never leave a fallen comrade,” I hissed. “And if this were a military situation, it would apply. Shut up.”
He lightly cuffed my ear. “If a dumbass teenaged supervillain can try to live up to that promise, then I can do one better. The only ways I’m leaving this place are victorious or dead.”
“Reid was right,” I said through gritted teeth while I held my leg. “You are an annoying older brother.”
His muffled laughter was drowned by the sound of helicopter rotors. A large helicopter touched down, unseen, in the parking lot.
The fake rain stopped.
“My my, what do we have here?” Wendy called in a tone of mock surprise. “Oh, goodness me, I think it’s my friends! Now it’s a party!”
Reuben and I said the same four-letter word in unison.
A flashlight’s beam cut through the darkness, the bearer hidden by the brightness. “Wendy?” a young woman called. “What’s going on?”
Oh, no. I knew that voice. “That’s Helen Woods. She can possess people.”
“They’re somewhere over there, on the far side of the room,” Terrence called. “We’re staying out their way until the rest of you arrive. Ben’s shot, but I don’t know how badly.”
Mercury Page 28