Metawars: The Complete Series: Trance, Changeling, Tempest, Chimera (103 page)

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Aaron didn’t explain his plan until I put all four of us down a block away from HQ, behind a pile of rubble that had once been the front of an office complex. The plan was a good one, and Alexia confirmed that she could do her part with no problem. Our second volunteer seemed less confident, but he was a kid, which was why Denny got exactly one job to do. He was our snatch-and-run guy.

The plan was simple: make sure the McTaggerts were in the building, cause a distraction, get them out—specifically, get Andrew out. He was an innocent kid, which made him our number one priority.

We left Denny behind with a com. The front gate was still open after yesterday’s dust-up, so all he had to do was wait for my signal to do his thing. Aaron, Alexia, and I crept around the rubble to the wall behind the Housing Unit. The angle hid us from sight of the Base, and a quick lift of wind got the three of us up and over. We stayed close to the walls, despite the fact that the building looked like it would fall down at any moment. At a corner, just out of sight, we stopped.

Alexia closed her eyes. As a metal manipulator, she could sense different types of metals around her—even if she couldn’t manipulate all of them, she knew if they were around. Every person who’d been imprisoned on Manhattan, herself included, had been fitted with a tracking collar. After our powers came back, one of the prisoners deactivated the tracking mechanism, but the collars were not removed. The collars and their locks were made out of a special alloy blend she’d never felt before, but she was confident of being able to identify it. Andrew had never worn a collar, but Freddy did. If he was inside the Base, she’d know.

Her eyebrows furrowed, and then she blinked at me. “It’s odd, but I’ve picked up on two collars,” she said.

“Two?” Unless one of our volunteers had somehow slipped their squad and defected to the Base, that didn’t make any sense.

“I’m positive there are two. Near the top, possibly the fourth floor, pretty close to the wall nearest our position.”

I recalled the layout of the Base as best I could. The fourth floor had several smaller training rooms and an equipment storage closet. Andrew and Freddy could be in any of those rooms. “Okay, thank you.”

Aaron pulled a handheld tranquilizer gun out of the waist of his jeans—one of the other things we’d collected at Hill House. Dr. Kinsey was developing a tranquilizer that would help us capture dangerous Metas, rather than have to seriously injure or kill them. The gun itself was the size of a standard Glock and preloaded with four blue-tipped darts. Our hope was to take the clones alive—or at least put them down before they killed us.

“Ready to make a distraction?” Aaron asked.

“Yep,” I said.

“Be careful.”

“You, too.”

Oh, fuck it.
It felt odd to kiss him with Scott’s face on, but his lips felt the same. He tasted the same. When we pulled back, he winked.

“I’ll be careful, too,” Alexia deadpanned.

Ah, sarcasm. I knew there was a reason I liked her.

I stirred the air on the other side of the wall, till broken bricks and upturned earth became a cyclone of dirty, impenetrable wind. Lifted it up and over the wall to create a dangerous fog that hovered at the second floor of the Base and covered the ground between here and there.

Aaron didn’t use the hybrid part of his hybrid-Changeling powers very often. At high speeds, his skin hardened and he could smash right through solid objects—the opposite side of the Base still had a hole he’d made months ago. He ran at the building, picking up speed as he went, graceful as any pro athlete. Right through the swampy grass left over from yesterday’s water spill.

The sound he made when he ran through the wall was indescribable—not quite a bang, but more than a pop. A small cloud of dust burped out of the hole. Alexia ran after him. The moment she disappeared inside the impromptu door, I lifted my dirt-fog cloud until it covered every window on this side of the building. Careful to keep it there, I divided my attention just enough to fly across the open space to the Base roof. I held the dirt-fog a moment longer, then collected it all into a massive, whirling ball of air and debris. I moved it to the opposite side of the Base and sent it crashing through a second-floor window.

Two distractions for the price of one.

I pressed my ear to the stairwell door. No footsteps. The door opened without too much effort. No alarms that I could hear. I descended as silently as possible on the metal steps. On the fourth-floor landing, the building vibrated. Far below me, metal groaned and squealed—probably Alexia doing her thing. I slipped out of the stairwell and onto the fourth floor. Checked the Wet Room—meant for water and ice elementals—and found it empty. The Metal Shop, where telemagnetics like Alexia would have once practiced their powers, was also a bust. On a whim, though, I grabbed a dusty iron pipe the length of a baseball bat off a rack of similar objects.

Just in case.

The next door was a storage room—locked. Another rumble from downstairs vibrated up through my feet. Curious and hopeful, I lined up my iron bat with the doorknob and swung down with all my strength. The knob broke off. I shoved the door open. Rows of metal storage shelves were empty of everything except dust, which gave me a clear view of the room.

And its redheaded occupant. Near the back of the spacious storage room was my target. Andrew leapt to his feet when he saw me, his green eyes going wide. We met halfway, and I lifted him up in a bear hug.

“You’re here,” Andrew said breathlessly. “Daddy said you’d rescue us. He really did.”

I hugged him tighter, my heart thudding with a relief that turned to fear when I realized he was wearing a tracking collar. It was newer than the collars I’d seen on the Manhattan residents, but definitely the same design. How the hell had the clones gotten hold of one of those?

“Where’s your dad?” I asked.

“Back there.” Andrew pointed at the corner he’d been hiding in. I put him down and followed him.

McTaggert was on his back, unconscious, breathing so shallowly that for a moment, I thought he was dead. His collar had something attached to it, and as I knelt down to examine the device, anger curled in my guts. A needle was jammed into his neck, and the needle was attached to some kind of small pump filled with amber liquid. The anti-Rangers had drugged him.

“He won’t wake up,” Andrew said.

“The bad guys are keeping him asleep.” I touched the attachment. It didn’t zap me. It also wasn’t part of the original collar. Getting Andrew out was priority one, but I couldn’t just leave his father here, drugged out of his mind. Hoping I didn’t cause any permanent damage, I got a good grip on the needle attachment and yanked.

For modern technology, the damn thing broke off really easily. The short needle came out, dripping amber liquid and little dots of blood on the floor. I put it up on a shelf, out of the way.

Andrew hovered next to my arm, his small body shivering. “Will he wake up now?” he whispered.

“I hope so.”

“Well, isn’t this the very picture of a modern Meta family?” asked a familiar female voice.

Crap.

Twenty-four

Sacrifice

I
stood and yanked Andrew behind me. Tricia lingered in the storage room’s doorway, arms folded over her chest, her expression black.

“You kids just interfere in everything,” she said.

“We have to stick with our talents,” I retorted.

“When will you realize that this is all for the best?”

A wash of blazing hate came over me. “The deaths of thousands of innocent people is for the best? No Ranger would ever believe that.”

“Oh Tempest, I may have your mother’s DNA, but I’m no Ranger.”

“Obviously. Did they forget to install a conscience, too, when they mixed you up in that test tube?”

She smiled. “Probably. They can be so pesky, you know. A conscience interferes with what must be done.”

Andrew grabbed my hand, and in an instant the world got brighter. I looked down and didn’t see him anymore. Hell, I couldn’t see myself, either. And Tricia was staring at us like we’d . . . disappeared. This must be what Andrew’s power felt like. He’d hidden us from her.

“You’ll have to go through me to leave this room,” Tricia said.

Shouldn’t be an issue. The building shook again, and something else metal screamed far below us. I lifted my left hand, prepared to blast her with some air. The floor in front of us erupted in a rush of water and tile, roared straight to the ceiling, then rained back down—she’d burst a pipe, damn it. Water rolled down my face and arms, making my shape visible to our enemy. Behind me, McTaggert sputtered.

“Give in, Tempest,” Tricia yelled over the roar of water. “Just give in, and you won’t have to hurt anymore. You won’t have to see any more of your friends die.”

“Go to hell!” I sent every bit of air in the room at her, which carried along quite a bit of water, too. The mass hit her square in the chest and sent her careening backward. Straight into the opposite wall—and through it. She disappeared beyond the wall in a cloud of plaster dust.

“Daddy?”

I turned. Andrew was helping McTaggert sit up. He blinked at me through the water still raining down. His pupils were blown, and he looked dead drunk. But he was conscious, and I could work with a conscious person easier than an unconscious one.

“Get Andrew out of here,” McTaggert said. “I’ll follow you.”

“You’re coming, too,” Andrew said.

“I’ll be right behind you, son. Promise.”

I didn’t argue with either of them. I picked up Andrew, who wrapped his arms and legs around my body like a tick, and we fled. Straight for the stairwell and down. More battle sounds echoed into the stairwell from the first floor. I had no idea which clones were downstairs, but Alexia and Aaron were giving them a run for their money.

The stairwell opened into a corridor that ended in the Base lobby. Or what was left of the lobby. The walls and ceiling had gaping holes, with dangling wires, exposed steel beams, and a few instances of metal cables twisted into modern art. Dust and debris littered the cracked and broken floor tiles. Sunlight streamed in through the hole that Aaron had created earlier. Four blue-tipped darts were embedded in the walls in various places.

I hesitated. Listened.

A body sailed into the room from a set of open doors on the other side of the lobby—Hinder, wrapped up tight in a coil of metal cables. He bounced off the floor and rolled to a stop in the center of the lobby. Blood oozed from a cut on his head, and he seemed barely conscious.

Score one for Alexia.

Alexia limped out of the room from which she’d ejected Hinder. She looked a little battered, but alert and spitting mad. A distant thundering sound made us both look to her left. The wall there exploded outward in a shower of sheetrock and wooden shards, and the impact knocked her sideways into the doorframe.

Aaron was running full steam with his shoulder firmly in Sledgehammer’s belly, like the world’s longest football tackle. He ran the clone straight into the opposite wall with a vibrating thud that stopped them both short. Sledgehammer cried out, and even Aaron stumbled back a step, a little stunned by the sudden stop. Bloody-faced and snarling, Sledgehammer crashed his fists down on Aaron’s shoulders. The blow sent Aaron down to his knees, eyes wide in shock and pain. Scott’s mask disappeared, which made Sledgehammer pause, confused by the change in his opponent.

“Shit,” I said. I felt for the wind—it wasn’t there. Tried again. What the hell?

Someone stumbled into the wall behind me, and I didn’t have to look to know it was McTaggert—he was Jinxing my powers and probably didn’t even realize it.

Sledgehammer grabbed Aaron by the collar of his shirt and lifted him up off his feet. I watched in helpless horror as Sledgehammer turned and slammed Aaron’s back against the broken wall next to them. Aaron screamed, and the sound froze my blood.

“Stop using your power!” I yelled at McTaggert. He blinked at me, still too stoned to really get it.

Sledgehammer let go of Aaron’s collar and stepped back. Aaron stayed suspended on the wall, his face stark white. Rage heated the ice in my blood. My entire body started shaking. Everything else I was supposed to do fled my mind. All I saw was Aaron, hurt, and the man who’d hurt him.

I debated rushing Sledgehammer—who was now yanking the metal cables off Hinder—but that would only get my neck broken. Instead, I dodged around the pair of clones and wrapped my arms around Aaron’s waist. He cried out when I pulled him forward, then went limp in my arms. On the wall was a bloody, protruding piece of metal the length and width of a butter knife.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I said, over and over, as I helped him lie on his side. I tried to get a look at the wound, but he grabbed my wrist.

“Andrew,” Aaron said. “Get him out.”

“But you’re—”

“He’s priority.”

I hated it when he was right. Making the conscious decision to leave Aaron there, wound unknown and untreated, was harder than I ever imagined it would be, and I didn’t have time to ponder the reason for that. I started to turn.

The displacement of air behind me was the only reason I didn’t get my face broken by Sledgehammer’s fist. I ducked the blow, then braced on my palms and kicked up, catching him in the gut with my foot. He “oofed!” and doubled over. My second shot nailed him in the nuts.

“Rangers!” Hinder shouted.

The oddball word choice startled me—had we gotten some unexpected backup?—until both Andrew and Freddy screamed and fell to the ground, clutching at the collars around their necks. The hell? I spun a cyclone of air right at Hinder and caught him in the face with it. He crashed into the pile of cables he’d been freed from.

Andrew and Freddy stopped yelling, but they both lay on the ground, stunned. I stared at them, far beyond rage at what Hinder had just done. “You son of a bitch,” I snarled as I rounded on Hinder with more air cycling around me. “He’s just a kid!”

“So were we,” Hinder shouted back. He yanked down the high collar of his black jumpsuit. His throat bore a thin red line all the way around like a necklace—he’d worn a collar like this, probably at Springwell.

That didn’t give him the fucking right, though.

I activated my com. “Phase two,” I said, then hit Hinder with enough concentrated air to send him crashing into the far wall, near where Alexia was just starting to come around. He slumped to the floor, groaning and clutching his right shoulder.

Phase two arrived in a blast of air movement. Denny was suddenly there, crouched in front of Andrew. He picked up the semiconscious boy, and then ran out again faster than my eyeballs could actually see.

Good, Andrew’s out. Priority one complete.

Hinder hit something on his wrist, and a high-pitched squeal blared from somewhere nearby. Had to be a signal. I started for him, and this time Sledgehammer did clock me. I went face-first into the floor. Pain stabbed me above my left eye and on my chin, and my stomach rolled. I couldn’t move to protect myself, and I braced for the next strike.

A second blow didn’t happen. Instead, the floor seemed to vibrate with the force of Sledgehammer running away. Only, he wasn’t alone, I realized when I managed to look up and clear the blood out of my eyes. He was trucking Hinder outside through one of the many new doors we’d made. Getting my badly battered ass up off the floor required a little bit of cheating. I used a cushion of air to lift up onto my feet, then followed them outside.

The thunderous whirring of a copter blocked out all other sounds. It was touching down in the parking lot between the Base and Housing Unit. Sledgehammer and Hinder were climbing on board before I pulled enough air to me to send back at them—until something knocked me backward onto my ass hard enough to jar my teeth.

Telekinetic. Copter.

Déjà vu.

The copter lifted up from the parking lot and whatever phantom had hit me also kept me down.

“Wait!”

Tricia bolted out of the Base, straight for the rising copter. It didn’t pause, didn’t go back down for her. They were leaving her behind.

Or not.

Tricia flew backward like she’d been drop-kicked, flew right at the Base, and smashed into the fourth floor with a sickening, bone-crunching thud. The power that sent her there let go, and Tricia plummeted to the ground.

My world tilted as the brutality of that action sank into my conscious mind. Not only had these bastardized version of our family left a teammate behind, they’d left her for dead and flown away. The original Rangers never would have done such a horrific thing. It drove home a serious point for me that day: DNA didn’t make a person.

It took me a few tries to haul myself up off the ground. All I really wanted to do was swallow a bottle of painkillers and sleep for a week. But first I had to take care of my people.

As I stumbled toward the Base, McTaggert limped outside and blinked up at the sunshine. Then he went to the hedges where Tricia had fallen. I joined him next to her broken body. She lay twisted halfway onto her back, face to the sky, blood pouring from both ears. She looked so young, so surprised—and, for the first time, nothing like my mother.

“They left me,” she choked out on a gurgle of blood that stained her lips and teeth.

McTaggert pulled off the black mask, revealing a face that probably looked just like the one he’d abandoned almost thirty years ago. He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. She smiled, gasped.

And died.

In a strange way, I saw my mother die a second time—only today, I felt no real sorrow for her passing. Just a small amount of relief that this ghost was exorcised from our lives.

One down, four to go.

Unless Springwell had the next generation of Meta clones cooking in their labs. Not a possibility I wanted to entertain just yet.

“Thank you for coming for us,” McTaggert said.

“I didn’t come for you,” I replied, even though that wasn’t completely true. “I came for Andrew.” I stood up and backed away from Tricia’s body. “I already lived through this once because of you.”

He got up, too, his face a twist of sorrow. “I know you did. I’m so sorry, son.”

The disgust I expected to feel at hearing him call me that didn’t come. Neither did any kind of familial feelings, but the lack of a serious negative reaction was definitely a check in the plus column. I didn’t know what to say to him, so I didn’t say anything. Instead, I went back inside to the lobby.

Alexia was kneeling next to Aaron, who was still pale, sweating, and breathing hard through clenched teeth. I crouched on the other side of him, finally able to see the blood staining the back of his shirt and pooling on the tile below. The wound was to the right of his spine, low enough to have gotten too close to a couple of vital organs.

“Hurts,” Aaron ground out.

“Can you move your legs?” I asked.

“Yeah. Andrew?”

“He’s safe. So’s his father. Hinder and Sledgehammer got away. Tricia Rice is dead.”

“Sorry.”

“Doesn’t matter. I need to get you out of here, babe.”

“Dad.”

“Yeah. He’ll fix you up.” To Alexia, I said, “Andrew is with Denny. Can you get McTaggert, and bring all three of them to Hill House?”

Alexia nodded. She’d been there only once, but she had Denny if she needed help navigating their way back. I wasn’t supposed to let them out of my sight, but right now, getting Aaron medical attention was more important than making certain a pair of federal prisoners didn’t run for it.

I won’t chase them if they do.

They wouldn’t, though. I believed they would both show up.

With Alexia’s help, we got Aaron on his feet and out into the sunshine. She didn’t comment on his new appearance, and I was thankful for that. Denny had returned with Andrew, and they stood nearby with McTaggert, watching us. I knelt down on one knee. Alexia and I got Aaron arranged so he was draped across my back, his arms around my chest and shoulder, face pressed against my neck. I gathered the wind, and once Alexia stepped back, we lifted up on the current. Into the sky.

On a direct path for home.