Secret Legacy (10 page)

She’d been talking into thin air, experiencing an altered reality he couldn’t see.

“Get off me.” Her anger surged through them.

“Not a chance. You’re having a lucid dream. You have to break the projection’s hold.”

The door to the room slammed shut as she trembled. It flew open again. A demented wind howled down the hallway, funneling into the room, around them, then out the shattered window, blowing out even more glass.

Tuning into his team’s psychic link, Richard sensed them advancing from the stairs, drawn by Sarah’s screams when her vision had attacked both herself and Richard.

“Stay back,”
he ordered through the team’s link.
“Sarah’s not stable.”

“We’ve got to move,”
Jeff replied.
“The bunker’s detected multiple telepathic energy surges. We’re on someone’s radar.”

“The center’s. Sarah was sucked into a vision as soon as she entered the house.”

“Shut up!” She beat against his chest. Her mind battered against the shields he’d been using to keep the others from detecting her meltdown. “I won’t let you destroy us. You can’t—”

“Stop it.” He shook her. “Wake up, Sarah. We have to go.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” Her voice rose with each word, softening as it grew more brittle, sounding almost childlike. “All of you, why won’t you leave me alone!”

Richard flew backward, propelled by the force of her hands pushing against his chest and her possessed mind shoving against his. He crashed against the already-crumbling wall beside the door, his head making contact with a sickening crack. His ears rang. Plaster rained down.

Jeff and Donovan rushed into the room.

“Stay back,” he warned, but the other men were already airborne, landing in a heap in the hallway.

The door slammed behind them.

“Everyone stand down,”
Richard projected, sensing the remainder of the team preparing to storm the room.

He pushed himself to his feet. He ran his hand over the back of his skull. He wiped blood-smeared fingers on his pants and approached Sarah. His mind cautiously tried to reach the essence of the woman whose memories had somehow triggered this.

“This isn’t you, Sarah. Something here is controlling your mind, and you’re still lost to whatever you saw. We have what we need for the council. You’re finally
remembering and that gives us something to work with. Now we have to get back to the transport.”

His meds would subdue her if need be. Her power to project others’ realities had been growing so rapidly, he always carried a complete series of his dream protocol whenever he worked with Sarah. But adding the burden of another round of psychotropic stabilizers to her body’s taxed stamina would further delay her full recovery. And the Brotherhood needed her mind whole. Richard needed her back in his lab by morning, remembering even more before the elders called them to the mat.

“You hate me,” she whimpered in a child’s rasp, her dark eyes lightening until they became a crystal clear blue. “You all want to use me. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Then wake up.”

Sarah’s mind was growing even more distant, becoming even less her. The bitterness of whoever was controlling her was seething to full life. And it was someone psychically strong enough to toss him and his men around, and to block his search of Sarah’s mind for their identity. Debris lifted off the floor. Leaves and dirt and bits of trash swirled around them.

“You don’t want me to wake up,” Sarah spoke for whoever was controlling her mind.

“You’re right.” Richard swallowed his panic. He protected his eyes against the maelstrom of grit stinging his face. “Whoever you are, you can go straight to hell for all I care. But you can’t take Sarah with you. Alpha?” he called. “Release the link. Target release, and reset to zero. Reset, Alpha. Now!”

It was the override command he’d embedded into
Sarah’s Dream Weaver programming when they’d first worked together at the center. It was his back door into her dreaming mind, one he hadn’t needed to use since bringing her to the command bunker. Now it wasn’t making a dent. Nothing was reaching her.

He felt for the pouch of meds snapped to his belt and withdrew a vial. He brushed Sarah’s cheek with his lips.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He jammed the hypodermic into the most accessible vein, given his awkward hold—in her neck—and pushed the plunger home. Her body seized instantly. Her beautiful eyes grew opaque, then warmed to their natural gray before her lids dropped. The flotsam racing around them fell to the floor like puppets whose strings had been cut. The room’s door creaked open, scraping as its top hinge gave way, clinking to the ground. The world grew silent in the same instant that Sarah’s rigid muscles fell slack. All of them, including her heart.

Richard fumbled for his belt and the shot of adrenaline that would counteract his recovery protocol’s effect.

His team stormed the room.

“We have company,” Jeff said.

Blood trickled from a gash along the man’s cheekbone, but his hands were steady on his assault rifle. He reached for the night goggles resting on his forehead and slipped them into place. Donovan and the rest of the team followed his lead.

“The helo had to bug out,” he added. “Transport’s waiting at the alternate location.”

Richard slipped his own goggles into place, then rose without administering the adrenaline, staggering to his
feet as he brought Sarah with him. His team took position around them, three in front with Jeff leading, two guarding Richard’s rear.

“Sit rep?”
he asked with his mind as he carried Sarah down the hallway, then the stairs, his consciousness digging for hers.

“Minor injuries,”
Jeff reported.

Richard could feel his second’s mind scouting ahead for attackers as the team moved through the house to the kitchen. They paused as a unit at every corner. At each critical point of exposure, Jeff scanned their escape route while the rest of the team remained alert, their rifles at the ready, anticipating possible attack from every vantage point.

“The bunker detected a six-person assault team before their position was cloaked.”
Jeff glanced back to Richard before continuing through the kitchen, his unspoken evaluation of the situation clear.

As Richard had suspected, someone at the center had known their team would be there. They’d known long enough to not only deploy a response while someone screwed with Sarah’s mind, but to utilize psychic cloaking, a rare telepathic talent. One Richard had mastered as a child.

“Break contact with command,” Richard verbally ordered. “No psychic communication until we’re in the air. We’re going black.”

They heard the deafening report of automatic gunfire a second before what was left of the kitchen windows exploded inward. Shards of glass flew around them as they dropped to the floor. Gritting his teeth, exhaustion
dragging at the last of his power reserves, Richard covered Sarah’s lifeless body with his own, closed his eyes, and envisioned the dark cloak of anonymity that was now the team’s best chance to rendezvous with their helicopter in a secluded clearing three-quarters of a mile away, an alternate location Richard had selected, anticipating a trap. One they had to assume the opposition knew about as well.

“They’re driving us,” he said over the blast of another round of automatic gunfire.

He drew his Beretta from his holster, shouldering off his rifle and handing it to Donovan, where it might do some good if the team needed backup ammunition. His free hand shifted to his med kit. Cursing, he made himself not remove the adrenaline. He curled Sarah’s body closer instead. Oxygen deprivation wouldn’t take a toll for several minutes, and the team couldn’t afford the distraction of Sarah recovering consciousness while they were under siege, her mind most likely out of control.

“I want the strike team down in two minutes,” he commanded. “Understood?”

“Let’s get it on,” Jeff responded for the team.

“Take point,” Richard ordered. “Simms and Jackson, flank. Donovan, Reese, and Walker, you’re with me. Protect the package.”

Each man silently regained his footing, crouching low and out of the range of the bullets still flying in through the windows. So far, the house’s solidly built walls were holding. As a unit, they checked the positioning of the Kevlar suiting that protected their vital organs. The rest of their shielding would come from their unity as a team and their trust in Richard to hide
their movements while they countered the opposing team’s assault.

They approached the kitchen door from the right, shielded from the screen’s non ex is tent protection. Richard closed his eyes and moved with his men, his instinct tracking their progress, his intuition feeling out the field of operation beyond the house. His mind pushed through the psychic resistance of the center’s soldiers, arrowing straight to the information he needed and leaving no trace of his presence.

“Four securing the yard,” he said. He could see their opponents in his mind. They were confident that their positions were secure. “Two moving to the right: automatics. One to the left: sniper rifle. One on the roof. Three are waiting beyond their team’s assault position, holding back in the woods between here and the alternate rendezvous. Counterattack,” he ordered. “We breach their assault, prevent further communication of our position back to the center, and carve a path to the helo. We’ll take them all in under sixty. Move!”

Jeff challenged the door first, firing cover rounds. Reese and Walker advanced, followed by Donovan, then Richard, who slipped Sarah over his shoulder so his right arm was free. Reese and Walker covered next, firing continuous rounds through the screen. Jeff pushed past them, rolling and coming to his feet as the rest of the team exited the house behind Reese and Walker, who opened fire to the right and left.

While the men took out the attackers on either side, Jeff pivoted and downed the sniper on the roof. A bullet slammed into his thigh, dropping him.

“Son of a bitch!” he said as Donovan helped him
back to his feet, the younger lieutenant still firing. He and Reese and Walker took care of the last man securing the yard. Simms and Walker secured the rear as the team kept moving, their rifles and gazes in constant, coordinated motion.

The immediate threat eliminated, they made it to the woods, gaining on the remaining center operatives who were now advancing from their concealed positions. Richard continued to cloak the team’s movements while he breached the opposition’s shields and thoughts.

“Five seconds until they’re in range,” he told his men. “Two in flanking positions. Donovan, you and Jeff fall back. Reese and Simms, take the point. I have the trees.”

Advancing his team into the assault, using their momentum to their advantage, Richard counted down.

“Three,” he said. “Two. One.”

His men opened fire before they could physically see their marks. Richard trusted them to hit their targets, while he kept his attention, his mind, his Beretta, trained on the threat he sensed lurking somewhere in the winter-stripped branches above them.

He closed his eyes.

He shifted once again to instinct alone.

Fear made its way to him on the wind, a spark of it that was quickly covered. But not quickly enough. Richard kept walking, shifting Sarah’s weight to achieve better balance. He lifted his shooting arm, opened his eyes, and fired at the shadowy figure perched a hundred yards away, twenty feet up.

The body fell to the ground, the man dead before he landed.

Richard knelt, laying Sarah onto the blanket of leaves
that covered the frozen ground. He ripped off his night goggles and removed the adrenaline from the pouch at his hip. It only took a glance to verify the medication and its dosage. He plunged the syringe into Sarah’s heart, then tilted her head back, cleared her airway, and began to breathe life into her deflated lungs.

“We need to get to the helo.” Jeff’s voice was thin with pain. His thoughts clouded Richard’s with a wave of anger. “We’re exposed here because of whatever connection the center still has to her. We have to move.”

“I need another minute.” Richard linked his hands, his fingers locked, and pumped Sarah’s chest.

He needed to feel her heart beating beneath his touch, or he’d lose his mind. He needed her consciousness connected with his again. Mission or no mission, a growing part of Richard needed Sarah, period, and that piece was in control now. He touched his lips to hers. Forced air into her body.

“Transport is a minute away, Colonel.” Jeff’s use of Richard’s title held a biting edge. “Two, tops. There’s a defibrillator. We’ll get her back once we’re airborne. We’ll secure her mind for the council’s debriefing, but we need to get out of here.”

Richard glared up to where his second was leaning against Donovan, Jeff’s leg a bloody mess from the bullet he’d taken fulfilling the same duty to their Watcher’s Creed that he was now demanding Richard honor.

“Thirty seconds.” Richard lurched to his feet, cradling Sarah’s insubstantial weight to his chest. “I want us in the air in thirty seconds.”

He moved toward the alternate rendezvous, stumbling, his body screaming at the nonstop psychic load he’d
been shouldering since racing from the control center to Sarah’s quarters. His men fell in step around him. As a team, they pushed to reach their ride in time to revive the dangerous mind likely responsible for the attempt the center had just made on their lives.