Heavenfall: Genviants Book 1 (6 page)

CHAPTER
SIX

"Don't talk to me." Mary grabbed her hoodie from the bed where she'd dumped the contents of the pillowcase and slipped the sweatshirt on over her t-shirt. "What were you thinking?"

"We all thought you were having a brain blast."

"Not another word from you. I have one little bleeding ulcer and you let Dex use it to take advantage of you."

"I made the deal to save your life."

She kicked the bed. "I won't thank you for that. It's just trading your life for mine." Taking her anger out on the furniture hadn't helped. It still boiled just under the surface. "Hell, he probably programmed the nanites to cause the damn ulcer to get your cooperation." She picked up her bloody clothes from the floor and walked out of the room. The Falcons had converted the classrooms on the second floor of the church into wards. Thankfully, she and Jonah were the only ones in the room.

Jonah followed her. "Even if he did, I don't care. I'd make the deal again. You're too important."

"According to Dex?"

He caught up to her and blocked her way. "You're too important to me." Jonah ran his hand through his hair. "Look, I have no idea what Dex's plan is, or why he thinks Hadrian can't hurt us, or what he thinks we can do to help take Hadrian down, but every instinct I have is telling me Dex is on the level with this."

She laid her hand on his arm. Softened her voice. "Look, he's not the same Dex you knew, no matter how much you want him to be."

"Last night, Corene called him a friend. I don't think he's so different now."

She skirted around him and stopped at the top of the stairs. "I hope you're right." Halfway down the steps, she realized she hadn't seen Corene. She was probably in another room waiting on the all clear. "Better tell Corene it's safe to come out now."

Jonah took the stairs two at a time. "She's stayed with Stran last night. You know how she feels about churches. They're going into the city this morning for breakfast and recon. They'll join us at the park later." He went past her to the refrigerator. "And speaking of breakfast, the guys s
aid they have some fruit and cereal in the kitchen. Some dry milk."

"Think I'll pass," she answered and tossed her clothes in the trash can.

"Then let's get a move on. I promised the guys they could race today."

"The motorcycles? Are you nuts? They're our only reliable transportation."

"They're getting restless, and I promised them if they got their skills down, they could race." He opened the front door and walked out. "Besides, I told them if they wrecked the bikes, I'd rip the mech out of their arms." He mounted the bike and placed the key in the ignition.

The tone of his voice sounded casual, which made it worse, and sent a shiver through her. She settled in the bitch seat and put her hands in the hoodie's front pocket. Jonah was far better prepared for whatever Dex had planned. A knight high atop his steed when she felt like a rook. Only able to move forward and backward, side to side. Her line of sight limited.

They passed the walled entrance ramp to interstate 640, Hadrian had the bypass closed off because it led to Clinton Highway and other routes to Oak Ridge, and Jonah revved the engine. This stretch of Broadway, littered with abandoned vehicles, made a good obstacle course. The bike handled the twists well, in and out of the narrow spaces with a certain grace. Every car and truck had been strategically placed by the Dragons. Either to cover the jagged potholes, or as a hand off point. Batons were getting scarce, though. Most of them, like her, were showing signs of brainwave transformation. Couldn't jump from bike to bike with a backpack full of stolen food or electronics, or bike to point, with blinding pain. Too dangerous. If you lost your balance for just a second, or misjudged because of the pain, you kissed the pavement. Or worse, the bike hit pavement. Road rash was the least of your problems. Hadrian's security forces had destroyed more bikes than crashes had. The riders and batons didn't make it out alive much either. That's why nobody wore helmets. Better to paint the road with your brains than to let Hadrian's men have a go at you.

Still, the knowledge that she couldn't jump didn't stop her heart from racing. Didn't stop her from wanting to stand and launch herself off the seat to the hood of a car, to roll the impact out and either hit the ground running, or drop to another bike going in the opposite direction. Jumping from bike to bike was a little trickier, and she'd nearly killed herself learning the skill. She'd do it again, though. Suffer every hurt, every bruise, abrasion, twisted ankle and swollen knee a thousand times to be able to do it again.

Jonah slowed as they approached the heart-shaped duck pond and the riders who were warming up and getting ready to race. The water, fed by an underground spring, gurgled and churned, another side effect of the energy web, and the ducks were long gone. Most of the buildings still stood, businesses and churches which had been burned or looted during the riots. Except for the big Baptist church on Broadway. Mobs had burned it out, and the brick structure collapsed into a blackened heap. Probably because it was the biggest and most visible. The Dragons had salvaged and cleaned up what they could, and most of the gang members flopped in the area. Technically, they were still inside the city limits, but the wall cut across Broadway about five miles south, closer to the old city. Nobody really cared what happened here.

The slow speed allowed her to scan the windows on the second story of the building they called the barber shop for Corene and Stran. Part of the building had once been a hair salon, the other part had held several small businesses. Her friends shared the upper floor with a few other couples. It afforded them more privacy than the Lion's Club building in the park where most of the gang lived. She and Jonah had offered to let the couple live in the house, but they'd refused.

She spotted Stran, his nose practically pressed against the window, watching the other riders. She recognized the raw yearning in his expression. He hadn't been able to go mech because of the A he needed to get through the brain blast, and hadn't been able to ride since the transformation. Jonah's orders. It took some people longer to recover than others, and Stran still had headaches. Headaches were a liability.

A creek separated Broadway from the
Fountain City Park. Mike and David broke off from the others and fell in behind Jonah. Together, they coasted to a stop at the little bridge in front of the club building and cut the engine. A half dozen or so gang members milled around the door, tense.

And with good reason.

Dex leaned against the building, his right foot jacked against the wall. He'd ditched the suit and wore a pair of faded jeans, biker boots, and a long-sleeved t-shirt. His old Dragons hoodie hung over his shoulder. He'd turned it so the four bars cut out of the upper sleeve showed. The prominent display an in-your-face reminder that he'd once been their leader.

Ballsy.

Jonah ignored Dex and turned his attention to David. "Get the races started, and make them a spectacle. I want everybody's eyes on you. We've got some things to discuss with Dex, and I want it kept private."

"You sure you don't want me to hang around?"

"Yeah, I got this." Jonah dismounted and pocketed the key.

David's sharp whistle cut through the park. "Alright, everybody. Races in five." A dozen motorcycle engines revved, and the guys hanging around the building grudgingly started moving to the other end of the park while she and Jonah walked to Dex.

"You gave up the right to wear that shirt five years ago." Jonah grabbed for it, but Dex blocked the attempt, their forearms locked in midair like some ancient bonding ritual.

Dex smiled. "I'm not wearing it." He pushed off the wall. "Remember what else happened five years ago?"

"No." Jonah turned his back on Dex and walked to the door. "Let's take this inside."

She fell in step behind them and halfway expected Dex to elaborate, but not surprised when he didn't push it. Five years ago?

She was sixteen. The first section of the energy web had been launched and connected, and the world had celebrated when the technology was proclaimed viable. Her parents had worked on the project, had lost their lives to it. The wall went up, and they were left on the fringes. Without options, Jonah had joined the Dragons.

Gang members weren't mech back then. Most of them had been weekend riders, riding the Tail of the Dragon, or the winding roads of the
Smoky Mountains, who simply got caught living on the wrong side of the wall. Controller technology was still considered experimental. Didn't stop people from signing up, though. Especially for the controller gig, and lots of volunteers meant Hadrian's science team didn't have to be particularly careful. The biomechanics were a natural progression from the controller tech. Hadrian used them to build a security force, and it didn't take long for the gangs to find their own surgeons. Counter measures after the wall went up and parts of the city turned into little more than war zones. Dex went mech, and even though she tried to talk Jonah out of it, he idolized Dex and did the same. When Dex deserted the Dragons and joined with the enemy, it had devastated her brother. Last night was the first time she'd heard Jonah say Dex's name since then.

Jonah still hurt, and whatever else had happened five years ago apparently wasn't enough to ease the pain of Dex's betrayal.

They sat at a card table, and Dex didn't waste any time. He slid a mini drive to Mary and a piece of paper to Jonah.

Jonah picked it up and put it in his pocket without looking at it, but she didn't touch the drive. "I'm not agreeing to anything until I get some answers."

"There was a power boost to the energy web yesterday. Reports went out confirming the jump to eighty-three percent. The reports were false. It was closer to thirty-eight percent."

"No, it's not possible. I felt it." Dex had every reason to lie to them, but even as she questioned him, the sick feeling in her gut told her he was telling the truth.

"The boost happened, and more intense here, because the section of the energy web over this area is twice as strong as the sections covering the rest of the world. That's the reason we have more brain blasts here and more incidents of psychic ability."

The news didn't surprise her. People from all over flocked to
East Tennessee on the suspicion that Hadrian protected his home more than the rest of the Earth. Early days, during his whirlwind tour of the world, he'd promised 'equal protection for all' in every speech. The riots stopped, mostly, and people breathed a hesitant sigh of relief. Some never believed the danger was real, while others believed the end had finally come and joined a doomsday cult. Either way, calm pervaded. Mostly.

"In other parts of the world, brain blasts are nothing more than a freakish accident. They don't happen often, and when they do, almost no one survives. Hadrian's kept all info about the effects of the energy web secret. Other countries voluntarily banned aspirin when Hadrian requested it, but only because they're required to provide a certain number of people as controllers, along with other gifts."

"Gifts?" Jonah asked.

"Bribes in some cases. Extortion in others. Money, gold, silver, precious stones. Hadrian's been playing political roulette. Promising leaders he'd boost their sections of the energy web while lowering the power of their enemy's sections, or threatening the opposite, depending. Imagine how pissed you'd be to learn the premium wattage you'd been paying for was going to be about as effective against the wave as a shower curtain against a tsunami."

Mary stood, stretched her legs and headed for the kitchen area. "Interesting, but it still doesn't explain why we have to be the ones to take Hadrian out." She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge. "Anybody else want one?"

Both men shook their heads.

"It's not a matter of Hadrian not wanting to boost the power. He can't."

"Problem with the hardware?" Jonah asked.

"No. The system has safeguards in place to prevent overload. The power for the web is routed through a network of low orbital satellite clusters which regulate the amount of power sent to the web. The power must be released incrementally through the clusters in order to keep them from burning out. Hadrian developed security codes to keep others from being able to increase the power and screw up his extortion plans, and he no longer has those codes. Hasn't had them for some time, and without the codes, nobody can get the web to one hundred percent power."

She took a long draw from the bottle, popped a couple of A, but it didn't help the acid churning in her stomach. "Who has them?" she asked, but wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"One of the prisoners at Brushy Mountain."

"Then why doesn't Hadrian take it back from him? Torture him until he tells Hadrian where it is?" Her brother, always thinking with his fists.

"It's not that simple. The prisoner extracted it from Hadrian's mind, psychic extraction, and Hadrian didn't have a backup. Too paranoid."

"So, it's in this guy's brain? Means Hadrian can't kill him?" Jonah sounded a little disappointed and impressed at the same time.

"No, Hadrian can't kill him, but they have tortured him. Physical torture as well as psychic. They're keeping him under control with drugs. A combination of psychic suppressants and opiate derivatives. It keeps him from using his gift to extract anything else, and they hoped they'd be able to coax the codes out of him while he was high, or needing a fix, but it's like he has a shield over the information. When he learned the wave was imminent, he broke. Made a deal to give the codes to a third party."