Metawars: The Complete Series: Trance, Changeling, Tempest, Chimera (130 page)

Seventeen blue dots. Five of those dots had a yellow ring around them, indicating they were unidentified powers.

Eleven of us had stayed behind.

Six unknowns were on our island.

Twenty-three

Raw Business

T
he main HQ phone rang. My brain was racing with the discovery of six intruders, and I almost didn’t answer.

“HQ, and make it fast,” I snapped into the phone.

“This is Joe Meade, one of the guards at the tower,” a deep male voice said. “I was coming on shift and found your friend Simon Hewitt unconscious near your parking lot.”

Well, that explains how the intruders got the puddle-jumper code.

“Is he alive?”

“Yeah. What’s—”

“We have a small situation over here. No one gets near our parking lot until you hear from me, do you understand?”

Maybe Joe Meade thought he was talking to Trance, because he piped in with a strong, “Yes, ma’am,” and then hung up. I had no clue how I’d call him back later, but at least no one else was coming over the harbor. I had enough to deal with.

The cluster of six dots was inside the building. I dashed to the secured weapons locker at the rear of the room and helped myself to a Coltson. By the time I got back to the computer, the dots had broken up. Two were moving toward the room where I’d left Sasha and the others. Four (including the mind-boggling identified blue dot) were heading for the infirmary.

I opened the loudspeaker. “Heads up, folks, we have intruders. Two heading your way, Sasha.”

My voice echoed down the hall of the mostly empty building and gave me an odd sense of comfort. Whoever these assholes were, they had fewer targets, and those targets still packed a hell of a power punch. Trusting Sasha to take care of half those targets, I made tracks for the infirmary.

The waiting area was empty. I took slow, careful steps toward the door into the private area, straining to hear something. Anything to indicate—

I felt the blow seconds after I stopped rolling across the carpet. My chest ached something fierce, and I couldn’t get a solid breath. My lungs seized as I tried to inhale, and my vision blurred. I’d lost my gun and my sense of equilibrium. My ears hadn’t stopped functioning, though, and I distinctly heard the sounds of a little boy sobbing.

Invisible people. Little boy. Simon unconscious.

Holy shit, they have Andrew.

Ethan’s half-brother Andrew had an invisibility power that affected people near him. All he had to do was concentrate on them, and they’d be as impossible to see as he was, for as long as he wished it. He’d been here before, which accounted for the identified power signature. If someone had hurt Andrew, Ethan would rip out each of their livers and feed it to the guilty party.

The invisible attacker didn’t come at me again.
So this is defense, not offense. Interesting.

I got myself back under control and listened. Used every trick Gage had ever taught me about tracking someone. The whisper of a foot over carpet. The softer sounds of Andrew’s gasps and hiccups. The rustle of fabric as it came closer, hopefully someone checking to see if I was conscious or not.

The rustling stopped. Close enough.

I rolled and lashed out at crotch level with my left hand, flexing it at the same time. The male phantom gasped and groaned as I smashed my fist into his invisible junk. Something swatted at my hand, so I kicked up hard. My foot connected with bone and the man clunked to the ground. He flashed into view.

He was my age, pale, bald, dressed in what looked like freaking Special Forces clothes—all black with lots of pockets. He also had the weirdest things attached to his head behind his ears, looping up toward his eyes like the world’s most bizarre headgear. Little yellow lights blinked along the gear. For a moment I thought he was wearing gloves, until I realized his hands were outlined in gray metal.

“Holy hell,” I said. What was he, anyway?

“Renee?” Andrew was running toward me, tears streaming down his face. The poor kid couldn’t go a month without someone traumatizing him, but I didn’t have time to console him.

I rolled up off the floor and gave him a rude push toward the door. “Get out of here, Andrew.”

“They made me help, I’m sorry, they made me!”

“I know, kiddo, it’s okay. I want you to go outside and hide, okay? Hide really well, so no one can find you.”

“Okay.”

Smart kid that he was, he ran.

The air moved, and I ducked in time to miss a blow from Robo-Man that smashed into the wall and right through a layer of drywall and stone. He kicked. It caught my shin like a baseball bat, and I stumbled through the infirmary door and into the corridor. He came at me like something out of a nightmare, determined and without any real facial expression. A monster with one mission—hurt and destroy.

Thuds and shouts echoed down the hall. I couldn’t get to those kids, couldn’t save them, until I took care of Robo-Man.

I flexed a leg and swept his feet out from under him. His ass hit the hard floor, and while my leg was out, I drove my heel into his junk a second time. I pulled back, then lunged past him to get into the infirmary. Two more strangers were still in there with my friends.

Apparently two shots to the nuts weren’t enough to fell Robo-Man, because he tackled me to the floor before I reached the doorway. His incredible weight pressed me flat onto the tiled floor, making my ribs ache with the pressure. Hands closed around my throat. He yanked me up to my feet and wrenched me back at the same time, and then I was in a chokehold I couldn’t break.

I flexed my legs out, twining around his ankles. We crashed backward to the floor, but he didn’t let go. His hold didn’t budge. Air got precious. My face flushed. I reached backward with my left hand and flexed out, wrapping that wrist tight around his throat. We were in a choke-off and I had no idea who’d win.

I squeezed, and as my own air cut off, I debated flexing tight enough to snap his neck. He was choking slowly, his intent clearly to knock me unconscious, not to kill. As much as I didn’t want to kill him, I also didn’t want to be unconscious and at his fucking mercy. I tried flexing my windpipe a little, stretching it out enough to get a bit of extra air down.

It kind of worked. He didn’t notice the change and didn’t increase pressure while oxygen brightened the darkness in the corners of my vision. The sounds from down the hall increased. I needed to get out of this, so I let my body go limp. Let every limb retract to its original shape, while keeping my windpipe flexed. Robo-Man held his grip a few seconds longer, then allowed me to slide to the floor. My head bounced a little hard but I managed not to groan or flinch. I slitted my eyelids and watched his booted feet walk toward the infirmary.

Oh, no, you don’t.

I flexed my left hand out, grabbed his left foot, and pulled. He toppled sideways, smashing his face into the wall. I wrapped my wrist around his ankle and squeezed until he screamed. I felt bone snap and something wet coated my skin. He kicked with his other foot and hit my left arm hard enough to break my hold. I pulled back and away, and he curled forward, groaning.

“Renee?”

The shout came from down the hall. One of the Greens from upstairs, a guy who insisted we call him Able, walked toward me, his face pale and eyes wide.
Idiot.
“Get back to your room,” I said.

He was already within ten feet of me, and he didn’t stop coming until he’d gotten the entire way, the fool. He stared at the infirmary door while I lunged to my feet, aching in unnamable places. Maybe he could be useful. His power had something to do with kinetic energy and—

The shadows moved in my peripheral vision, and I pivoted. Two new figures stood in the infirmary doorway. One was an almost identical copy of Robo-Man, right down to the shaved head and gear, only she was a girl. The other person was Nancy Bennett, aka Switch, and she was holding my gun.

Without thinking, I moved in front of Able, keeping myself between his stupid ass and the barrel of that gun.

Robo-Chick helped Robo-Man stand up, letting him lean on her while his foot bled all over our floor.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“To make amends for a few of my worst mistakes,” Switch replied. She sounded weary, old, just plain worn out.

I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for her. “By sneaking on to our island and picking a fight? Or by putting our people in danger with that huge-ass fire at Stratfield?”

“The diversion was necessary.”

“For?”

Her eyebrows jumped, but she didn’t answer my question. “A series of secondary explosions are set to go off at Stratfield in five minutes. Allow us to return to your copter and leave the island, and you have my word that I will disarm them.”

“And if I say no?”

“Richmond will be cleaning up the damage for weeks, and you’ll be planning quite a few funerals.”

We had twenty people at Stratfield by now. I didn’t trust her, but we were both all-in and she had every damned wild card in her hand this time.

“What were you doing in the infirmary?” I asked.
Killing Bethany and Landon? Doing what your clone minions couldn’t? God, how am I going to I tell Derek?

“Four minutes thirty seconds, Flex,” Switch said.

“Fine.” I swept one hand at the empty hall. “Go.”

Robo-Chick touched the implant next to her left ear, then began hauling Robo-Man down the hall toward the main entrance. Switch followed, the Coltson still aimed at me. I trailed after her, even though I was desperate to know what she’d done in the infirmary. I had to see this through first. Maybe somehow get the drop on her so she didn’t escape.

The sun was nearly down, casting the courtyard in shadows and putting a chill in the air. Two more men just like Robo-Man joined them at the puddle-jumper. Their faces were different enough that they probably weren’t related, but each one had the resigned expression of a soldier who knew no other purpose than following orders. And underneath that technology stuck to their heads, they were (at least according to our security scans) still Meta.

What the hell had been done to them?

The four Robo-soldiers climbed into the puddle-jumper. Switch didn’t. They powered up and flew away like that had been the plan the entire time. They headed toward southern New Jersey, not the observation tower, so any chance of Joe Meade stopping them evaporated.

“I’m a person of my word,” Switch said. Without lowering the Coltson, she removed a small device from her pocket. She typed something into it. “Your people in Richmond are safe from me.”

We were alone in the courtyard, just me and Switch. The person also known as Uncle, who’d caused us so much pain this past week. Who’d caused other people so much pain decades ago by stealing their children and faking their deaths. As desperate as I was to understand her reasons, all I could do was stand there and hate her.

“Why did you stay?” I asked. “Switching sides again, Switch?”

“No one turns on the Overseer and survives, Flex. Not even me.”

“Why not? Who is the Overseer?”

“He never should have sent them after her.”

“After who? Bethany?”

Switch took something out of her pocket and held it up. A flash drive. She lightly tossed it to me. “There are two videos on there,” Switch said. “Video one is for the kids, from Uncle. Please let them watch it in private first.”

“Okay.” I clutched the drive hard to keep my hand from shaking. She was giving me instructions, which meant she wasn’t going to shoot me. So what was going on? “What about the second video?”

“The second video is for Dahlia.”

“Dahlia?”

Switch pressed the muzzle of the gun to the underside of her chin and squeezed the trigger.

•  •  •

I’d thrown up on the grass twice before Sasha found me outside by the entrance steps. She helped me stand, seeming more confused than hurt.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I replied. “She killed herself.”

“Is that . . . is that Switch? Uncle?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

Sasha swallowed hard, her glittery eyes shiny with tears. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I, trust me.” I pulled out of her hold, grateful for the help but perfectly able to stand on my own.

Dahlia. Infirmary.

I was running before I even realized it, straight to the infirmary, with Sasha shadowing me—and thankfully eighty-sixing the questions I couldn’t answer. Sasha’s people and my two Greens were in the corridor near the infirmary.

“There’s a little boy named Andrew hiding outside somewhere,” I said to no one in particular. “Tell him Renee says it’s okay to come out.”

I hustled through the waiting area and into the private hallway. Persistent thudding came from behind Kinsey’s closed office door. I shoved it open and earned a grunt as it hit something. The obstacle moved, and I got the door open the whole way. Dr. Kinsey was on the floor, mouth gagged with medical tape, his wrists and ankles bound with plastic zip ties.

“Untie him,” I said to Sasha, who knelt and tried to unwind the tape around his mouth.

The door to Double Trouble’s room was open, the bed empty. My heart slammed double-time against my ribs. I checked Landon’s and Maddie’s rooms next. They were both fine—alert and confused, with no additional wounds.

To my utter shock and relief, I fell right over Noah when I burst into Bethany’s room. He was on the floor, curled onto his right side, half awake. I crawled to him on my hands and knees and grabbed his shoulder.

“Noah, it’s Renee. Can you hear me? Are you okay?”

He reached up to clutch my hand, face scrunching in obvious pain. He let out a long, low groan.

“Noah? Did they hurt you?”

“My head,” he said.

“They hit you in the head?”

“No, not that. Hurts . . . can’t . . .”

Dr. Kinsey stumbled through the door and knelt opposite me. “Noah? Son, what happened?”

Noah twisted his neck and blinked up at his father. The green was back in his eyes, some of the shadows below them gone. But any relief at those changes shattered into horror when his face crumpled and he said, “She’s gone, Dad. I can’t feel her anymore.”

“What?”

“Dahlia’s gone.” The words ended on a choked gasp. Dr. Kinsey pulled his son into his arms and held him while he shook.