Cryostorm (7 page)

Then again, I’d thought Zach’s mom was a normal mom. Turned out she’d been there in California when I was taken last summer. Maybe Georgia’s Lois was that, too?

“Come on, you were so talkative a minute ago.” Damn, she was calling my bluff on the interrogator thing I’d said. One last try before I turned the cold on.

I reached into my backpack and pulled out the book. “You looking for this?”

Melanie’s eyes widened, then her lids rested half-mast over her eyes. Her head ticked to the left, then in the next breath, the skin around Melanie’s fingers turned silver. It shot up her arms, shredding through the long, thermal underwear top she was wearing as she instantly buffed into muscle-woman arms.

Rope shredded as she yanked her hands free, ripped the cloth collar from her throat, and lunged. Her silver hands aimed for my neck. Since I wasn’t gifted with superspeed, I didn’t get out of the way in time.

Cold fingers curled around my neck while Melanie’s other hand reached for the book. Thankfully, I had super strength, so she wasn’t able to pull it from my grasp. But, she wasn’t wimpy at all as the grip around my throat indicated.

I iced down my free hand and planted it on her face. Looked like the steel only covered her arms.

Oh, and her feet as evidenced by the shin she just kicked. Pain radiated up my leg. I swear bones cracked, and I felt my teeth vibrate.

Melanie stared at me with blank eyes. Before she’d stared at me with such hatred and disgust and anger, but now, it was empty. Nothing—

Wait, there was something. A faint red pulse in her left eye, the upper left part of it.

I iced my face down and clanked it against her forehead. She stumbled back but I slammed my frigid fist into her temple.

The grip around my neck loosened, but she batted me against the wall next to the door. The wind knocked out of me, and I slithered to the floor. I froze down, her fist clanked off my face, thankfully not getting through the ice, and she grunted.

She wouldn’t relent, though. Fist after steel fist, she rammed against me. I thought sparks would fly soon. She swung for another hit, but I was able to grab her wrist and crank back. Groaning of cold steel stretching, then the ring of its snap reverberated off the walls.

Still, she didn’t scream. Just a quiet grunt. Wide, worried eyes returned, but only for a flash, then the left one took on that red pulse and went blank again. Then she kicked my feet out from beneath me.

“That’s it.” I streamed her with ice as she charged. She plowed through the first bit, but I turned it on and poured concrete-thick ice in front of her and cocooned her. Her face went blue, instantly. “Shit.” I might have killed her.

I stepped to the door to yank it open and remembered my broken shin. My butt hit the floor with a resounding thud and a zinger of pain shot up my spine right to the base of my neck.

Instant headache.

I glanced at Melanie. She was still frozen, so I turned the cold on around me, focusing on my shin. The ice tugged at my skin, and I flopped onto my back. The jolt of bones cracking back into place resonated, echoing in my mind. The door burst open and Nate rushed in. Georgia and Tim followed close behind.

“Mandy!” Nate yelled.

“Healing,” I whispered, “Georgia, help Melanie.” Then I allowed the ice to fully take me, soothing each and every knick my collision with the wall or Melanie’s wicked fists inflicted. I watched through my sheen of ice surrounding me.

Tim shut the door while Georgia reached for Melanie’s frozen image. Her finger touched the ice and it turned to steam within seconds. Melanie collapsed.

“What happened?” Tim asked. “She has steel arms.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking those records you hacked into at The Center about her were a bit wrong,” Georgia said.

I pulled the ice back.

“Shit. That means they know I’m hacking, maybe. Planted a fake,” Tim said.

“Might not know it’s you, specifically, Tim,” Nate held out his hand toward me, and I grabbed it. He sucked in a deep breath through clenched teeth.

“Sorry.” My hands must have been cold.

“But you’re right, they know someone’s digging for information.” Nate looked at Tim. “But they probably think it’s me.”

“Shit.” Tim tunneled his hands through his hair.

“What?” Georgia asked.

“Well, then they know about me and Martin, because we all died with you,” Tim said.

“And Melanie here told the world you’re alive anyway, so it’s safe to say they know everything. So, Melanie said you were their one and only success at making an obedient subject.”

“But I’m not. I left. I orchestrated the biggest act of disobedience ever.” Nate gazed at Melanie.

“I didn’t understand that, either.”

“She’s gone,” Tim said as he stood. “How the hell—I don’t get it.”

“Look. Sun’s almost up. We need to get out of here. Georgia, I’m sorry to ask this of you, but I need you to incinerate Melanie’s body.” Nate stepped forward. “Can you do that if I speed it out of here then come for you?”

“Yeah. I can do that. Then we’re going to get Lois.”

“She’s an hour north of here,” Tim said. “At least in normal weather.”

“If we got a hit, then so did The Center,” I added.

“More than likely.” Nate nodded. “That’s why we need to hurry, we need to be the first to get to her.”

“Where is she?”

“Homeless Shelter.”

Chapter 10

“Y
ou know what I just figured out?” Tim said from the back seat of the Jeep.

I looked back at him and Georgia. The open laptop in Tim’s lap spilled its illumination over his sunken features.

“What?” I asked.

Nate stared forward, driving, eyebrows furrowed. The snow had let up some, but the roads were still covered by nearly three feet. I wasn’t sure how the Jeep was making it through.

“God, I can’t believe I missed this before.” He shook his head. “You know the names in the book from your mom?”

“Yeah?” Georgia said.

“Each one we’ve found was dead. Well, besides Bev and the few Andrey confirmed were with Bev. And they died in car crashes. Suicides. Work accidents. Hell, even cancer got one. All but that cancer one are typical ways an organization like The Center would eliminate people, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Lois has popped up on the radar near a few of these names. Look.” He pointed to his screen where he’d inputted the names listed in the book. We’d been trying to find them so we could get more information on how to expose or end these people. “You think she’s looking for them, too? To try and help?”

“How? How does she know about all of this? How to hide?”

“She’s obviously more than what you’ve ever known her to be, but I’m more worried about Melanie, to tell you the truth,” I said. “If all those records you hacked into were falsified, Tim, then someone knows about us.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, and I have a theory,” Nate said.

He’d been so quiet since we’d left but I’d written it up to concentrating on driving in the storm. Should have known his oversized brain was working to figure everything out.

“She saw us down at the pool, but we didn’t run into her until much later?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s plenty of time to report it, and for The Center to falsify her records, knowing we’d check them. They could have advised her to do exactly as she did, you guys. She, obviously, wasn’t a low-level Agent like we’d thought. She’d gotten information from us. Gotten our defenses down thinking she was of minimal threat.”

“That’s the only explanation that seems realistic,” I said, more hopeful than convinced. “We’d been Agent free since we died. No activity around Scott, Jasmine, or Zach. Nothing on the airwaves that Jasmine and Jess had found per Martin. Right?”

“It’s something to consider. Regardless, everyone knows we’re alive.
All
of us,” Tim said. “And I’m thinking Nate, Mandy, and Georgia are top three on the most wanted.”

“Which means they’re going to hit us with everything they have.”

“Including Bev’s team,” Georgia chimed in to the conversation. “Don’t forget about Auntie Bev.”

“They’re separate from The Center, but we have to assume they’ll catch wind.” Nate said. “Remember, some of those Agents didn’t even know about Andrey.”

“The Center was more focused on the book, which is when Melanie went nuts. Bev’s team was more focused on getting me and Georgia in for dissection.” I reached over and gripped Nate’s shoulder. “But now that they know their Josiah is alive and well, I think that changes things.”

What cracked my heart the most was that Nate was found out because of me. Before I’d moved into his apartment complex with Georgia, he’d been living many years without detection. Hell, he, Tim, and Martin had set up a little Do-Gooders club, using their powers for helping the college kids. Keeping people safe.

Then I had to come in and wreck things. Like I did with Zach’s life. Look where that got me. Now Nate’s hidden life, as he knew it, was over. The guilt weighed on my heart like a two-ton truck.

Everywhere I went I left a wake of destruction. I slid my eyelids shut hoping the tears wouldn’t spill over. This nightmare would never be over, would it?

A jolt in the truck yanked me back into the moment.

“Sorry. Difficult to see the curbs sometimes.” Nate turned the wheel gently. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I fell asleep?” I asked as I sat up. The crick in my neck answered me before Nate had to say anything. I slid my fingers around my neck and squeezed out the tension. How could I have fallen asleep like that? “Where are we?”

“Burgess, Minnesota.”

I glanced behind me and saw Tim and Georgia leaning head to head, sleeping. His arm draped over her shoulders, and she tucked up against him, arm around his waist, she held on to him like a life preserver.

Guess everyone was tired.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’m fine. You?”

“Not even a little.” I pushed myself up more.

For the first time in over three days, I saw a hint of sunshine. Rays of light trickled through the remaining snowflakes that the wind wrestled up.

“So, she showed up at the Burgess Mission of Hope homeless shelter last night.”

“We close?”

“Yep, just down the street.”

“God, I hope we find her this time.” I scrubbed my hands down my face. Man, I had dragon breath, felt like crap, and my body was heavy and tired from the awkward position I’d taken a nap in.

“Me too. The Center thinks she has the book, it seems.”

“What I don’t get is, surely, they have to know that destroying the book doesn’t make everything they did go away.” I shook my head. “I’m not the brightest lightbulb out there, but I’m not completely stupid.”

“Think of it like this. The book, written by your mother, has handwriting samples that can be confirmed as hers. Then you and Georgia and all that you guys can do. It, too, confirms the book and DVDs claims. Then you have me, Tim, and Martin.” Nate glanced around, then steered the Jeep to the right. “We’re all evidence. Now, so is Lois. They need all of us gone. Silenced somehow.”

“And we’re not going to the police or FBI because we’d have to expose ourselves.”

“We’d be freak shows. Science would win out and want to study us. We’d never be free. Sure, we wouldn’t be hunted by Agents—although I highly doubt even if the FBI shut them down it would stop—but other people. Doctors, media, curious people.”

“I get that. But wouldn’t doctors, media, and curious people be the lesser of two evils?”

“I don’t think the evil work that The Center and Bev’s gang is doing will ever completely stop. But if we’re celebrities, it would be that much more difficult to hide.”

“Nate, I was wondering something.” I glanced at him, my heart suddenly thumping with anxiety.

“What?”

“You were far up in the organization. Know many people, where locations are.”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t we go in and blow the places up? Like me, Jasmine, and Georgia did in California?”

“It’s an option, Mandy.” He looked at me, probably longer than he should have considering he was driving. “But I know, from you telling me, how difficult it was for you to destroy that one building in California and the people in it. Would you be able to do that many times over? Bigger buildings? Filled with people. Maybe even people like you. Children, too?”

My stomach shifted. “But if we don’t, how will we ever be free?”

Nate drew in a deep breath. His knuckles blanched as he gripped the steering wheel. “I’m not sure we’ll ever be free. No matter what we do.”

Chapter 11

I
pulled the heavy, wooden door of the bar-slash-restaurant open and was met with a wave of greasy fries smell. My stomach rumbled. I was so sick of hotel food after being cooped up in that, I would kill to sink my teeth into a juicy burger.

But first, I had to look for Lois. When we found out she wasn’t at the shelter, we’d fanned out to search the seven structures in this tiny, one stoplight town. It reminded me of Trifle, actually, only it was smaller if that was even possible.

Georgia took the diner next door and Tim and Nate covered the café, other bar, and a gas station. It was only ten in the morning, so the bar portion of the establishment lay dormant off to my right. I stepped in to be sure, though.

Booths lined the wall to my right, but they were empty. Several round tables littered the floor throughout the small space, and then the main attraction, the tall, oak bar, shone beneath the canned lights above it. Kind of like an altar.

But it, too, was quiet.

I caught my reflection in the mirrors behind the bar, and the light illuminated the blue streak in my hair like a neon sign. Maybe I should start wearing hats. I never liked them, but that streak screamed, “Hi, I’m Mandy. Please shoot me with a dart.”

I turned around and went back to the entrance area, then straight through to the diner side. Unlike the bar, this place was bustling. Chatter and silverware clanking wafted through the air along with the smell of bacon and pastries. My mouth watered again.