Overtaken (27 page)

“Dad,” Chase said, entreating his father to listen. “Please don't do this.”

Cochran shook his head. “It's already done.”

Chase ran across the room to the console, Topher and me right behind him. A countdown on an old desktop computer gave us five minutes.

“What is this, Dad? How do we turn it off?” Chase started to freak.

“This is where we used to launch our satellites from,” Cochran announced proudly. “I retrofitted a few things for my needs.”

I took in the room with new eyes: This is where it had all started more than seventeen years earlier. I tried to imagine the massive satellite and rocket sitting over this platform, scientists racing around, performing last-minute checks. Never knowing the disaster that was about to strike and wipe out the entire lab, exposing our pregnant mothers to electromagnetic radiation, which mutated their unborn children's genes.

“It's better this way,” Cochran said, trying to put an arm around his son and lead him away.

Chase shoved him off. “Don't touch me! Turn it off!”

“I can't, Chase. It's over. Come with me.” Cochran turned to the rest of us. “All of you. You've proven yourself as valuable assets.” He was so calm, but it was clear he knew the levels he had sunk to. Just because he wasn't a gleefully cackling villain didn't mean he wasn't a villain all the same. He started to back away as he spoke, and I doubted he meant what he was promising. If we went with him, who's to say that he wouldn't turn on us in an instant? Chase, Topher, and I stayed firmly planted where we were.

“Chase!” Cochran snapped angrily. “These two can stay if they want, but you don't have a choice. Let's go!”

Chase shook his head, defiant. “You're wrong. I do have a choice. I choose my friends.” Chase stood firm, proud. A man at last. That was the last thing he'd ever say to his father.

With barely a tear in his suddenly steely eyes, Cochran turned to abandon us—

—only to be sideswiped by a familiar blur that tossed him to the cold metal ground. Oliver! He was a step ahead of the searing-hot electricity that arced through the air. Without slowing down, he traced the curve of the room, directing as much of Jackson's fire as he could to the cylindrical rock wall all around us. Not a bad idea, until the bolts started to crack off large pieces of rock, sending boulders hurtling down on top of us.

“Look out!” I screamed, leaping for safety. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Chase jump free and Topher roll out of the way. That distraction was all it took for me to miss the mammoth chunk of falling rock slam into and through the metal in front of me. I met nothing but air on the way down. A second earlier and I would've been crushed. A second later and my hands might not have found the edge of the grate. Though I could feel my fingers crack and twist, they stopped just short of breaking, and I was able to hold myself up. My shoulders and chin rested on the bent, drooping metal, while everything below my waist dropped off into empty space. I scanned the room and noticed Cochran was gone.

“Oliver! Follow Cochran—you need to stop him!” I cried, but I couldn't see my friends through the sparks and dust that had been kicked up by the cave-in.

What I could see was Dana, limping through a cloud of crushed rock with a deranged grin on her face. “Dana. Help.” I knew it was useless, but I could feel myself slipping. I desperately needed her to give me a hand or I was going to fall. Without a word, she drew close and stared down at me. “Please . . .”

All she did was lift her foot and bring it down. Hard. Grinding my fingers. The pain shot through my arm, and I pulled my hand away, which left me dangling from one hand. I closed my eyes as she lifted her foot again, ready to bring it down on the only thing left between the end and me. I tried to picture my dad and his bright, reassuring smile that always made me feel as if I could do anything I set my mind to.

A bolt slammed into the back of Dana's head, sending her out over my head and spiraling into darkness. I didn't hear her land.

A moment later Jackson's hand reached down to me. I didn't know if I could trust him, but I had no choice. He pulled me up and then in close to his chest. I clung to him tightly. It had been so long since he'd held me in his arms.

“Forgive me,” he murmured.

“I . . . I . . . What . . . How . . . ?” I felt dizzy and confused.

“She never had me, Nica. I just let her think she did. It was the only way I could find out what she was up to. How else could I have found out about Blackthorne for you?”

I shook my head and looked at him, wondering if I'd heard him right. “You?” I cried, pulling away and looking him directly in the eyes. “You were the—”

He cut me off with a severe nod. “I'll tell you everything. I promise. After we stop Cochran.”

I searched his eyes to see if his was lying to me. All this time, he'd just been pretending? I couldn't believe it, but I also had to admit that it made a certain amount of sense.

“I don't know if we can stop him,” I said, unsure if I had any fight left in me.

“Then we can at least make him pay.” He grabbed my good hand and led me out of the facility as more rocks began to fall to the floor, destroying what was left of the room behind us.

By the time Jackson and I wove our way back through the concrete halls and reemerged outside near the helipad, Cochran's escape copter was already lifting into the air. It moved slowly, swinging wildly from side to side as it struggled to take off in the high winds and nearly blinding drifts of heavy snow. He was clearly comfortable leaving his two sons, Chase and Oliver, now united in a newfound disgust and abhorrence for their father, behind to freeze to death on the mountaintop.

Oliver saw Jackson first, but I held my hand up as soon I saw the fear in his eyes. “It's okay. He's back.”

But Jackson didn't seem happy. His eyes flashed the same color blue as his hands, and I could tell that anger had consumed him. He aimed his hands as the helicopter lifted higher and higher, ready to fire a blast that would bring the whole thing down in flames.

“NO!” screamed Chase, leaping in front of him.

I couldn't understand Chase's desire to protect his monstrous father, but then, I wasn't the one in that position. Would I do the same for my father if the shoe were on the other foot? The two rivals locked eyes, each daring the other to stand down. Neither one so much as flinched until Jackson lowered his hands and the helicopter vanished into the darkening sky.

Jackson, Chase, Oliver, and I barely had a chance to breathe before the first explosion. When it detonated, it sounded like a pleasant rumble—a distant firework celebrating an obscure holiday. I knew the awful sound signaled death and destruction, but I tried to hold on to hope—however tenuous a fantasy—that everything would be okay. My friends reeled back. Jackson grabbed my hand and tugged, frantic.

“Run, Nica!”

My feet stayed firmly planted in the thin layer of snow and ice. I shook my head.

“It's over,” I muttered.

“No, it's not!” Jackson yelled back. “We can get out of here!”

“And go where? Stand under the avalanche?”

My memory of Cochran's secret documents reminded me that my friends and I were just out of harm's way: above and a quarter of the way around the mountain from the path of the avalanche. We were so far away that it took a full thirty seconds for the reverberations to weave their way through the solid rock and ripple beneath our feet. A second, third, and fourth explosion sounded. One after the other, they echoed the whole way down the mountain.

Everyone relaxed—barely—as they realized I was right. From our vantage point, it was impossible to get a look at the fire and ice that surely erupted into the air, but I could picture the small concrete bunkers bursting outward in orange and yellow flames. Not only was all the evidence of Bar Tech's training camps being erased, but the ground beneath them was being shattered. A solid line of broken stone and unstable ice would reach from the first explosion to the last, breaking a sheet of earth and snow cleanly off the surface of Whiteface and sending it hurtling at our small town below.

The sound of crashing snow was unmistakable and all encompassing. I imagined the rescue workers in the streets starting to turn around. I imagined kids awake in their beds wondering what the roar in the distance was—the roar that was growing louder every second. I imagined parents looking up at Whiteface in horror, wondering how much time they had. Long enough to say good-bye?

Standing up here, helpless, was almost worse. It wasn't a death sentence, but part of me longed to be among the doomed so that the guilt wouldn't haunt me for the rest of my life. This was my fault. The war that had sparked between Dana and me had metastasized into something that touched each of my friends and now many more people I didn't even know. Sure, the five of us up here would survive, but what would it matter if our families didn't? Not to mention we'd be trapped up here with no way of getting down, short of walking. There I was, full circle back to “death sentence” again. But there was no way to stop a wall of snow.

Or was there?

“Maya,” I gasped. “Where's Maya?” The boys looked at me like I was crazy. “Topher, we have to find her!”

“She could be anywhere in Barrington by now, Nica,” Jackson interjected. “Or dead.”

I wasn't accepting this for an answer. No. I knew where she was. I called up Bar Tech's bank of screens in my mind, the ones from which I watched her unleash chaos just an hour or so ago. I hadn't been paying attention to the details, but I tried to focus. What street was she on? In which direction was she walking? What could I see and what could it tell me? I had to hope my recall was accurate and I wasn't just seeing what I wanted to see. Oliver could run down there and check, but we didn't have time. There was what—a few minutes before Barrington left the map?

An hour ago she was walking north up Laurel. Where was she going?

“Guys, if you take Laurel north from the school,” I asked, “where does it go?”

“Uh, um . . .” Chase tried to land an answer. “Nowhere, really. Dead-ends in a cul-de-sac near the base of the mountain. Just woods.”

I knew it! There was nothing left for her here. She'd finally leaped straight off the deep end, and there was nothing for her to do anymore but run. Luckily, it seemed like she was running in the right direction to do one last thing before disappearing for good.

“Last time she left, she told me that she'd spent time in the woods, that she'd centered herself there. She needed to calm down and regain control of her powers. I bet you anything she's doing that again, and it's right where we need her to be.” I strode to Topher's side. “Take me there.”

“She just laid waste to almost half the town!” Topher barked back, shooting me an “Are you insane?” look.

“Topher, please,” I begged. “I need to talk to her. We all do. She needs to know she's our only hope.”

Chase, Jackson, and Oliver looked at one another. I hoped they realized I was serious. “She can stop that avalanche if you can get us there!” Topher shook his head. “Now or never, Topher!”

“Now or never,” he muttered, grabbing my hand. I took Chase's, Chase took Oliver's, Oliver took Jackson's, and we all closed our eyes. Topher exhaled heavily, trying to find peace at the center of this disaster. His breath slowed. He focused at some unseen point and rolled his head in a circle, loosening his neck—and there we were. Five of us, together, in the woods at the edge of town. Sure enough, the rumble of the avalanche was as I'd imagined it. Distant but intense. No doubt something awful was headed straight for us. I strained to see our target in the dark.

“Maya!” I shouted.

The boys chimed in, calling Maya's name in a mad hope that somehow she would hear us in time. As I tried to get her attention, Topher controlled our location, projecting us from one place to the next, disappearing from one segment of the woods and reappearing in the next. We moved deeper and deeper, closer to the avalanche until I turned around—and there she was. Totally alone.

Maya was bruised and bleeding, a vacant look still haunting her face, though her eyes seemed brighter than ever; silver stars set in her skull, waiting to explode. She didn't seem particularly surprised to see us; instead, she was content. Relaxed. Maybe resigned to what was about to happen.

“Nica . . . ,” she said quietly, pointing over my head in the direction of the encroaching disaster. “Can you see it? It's coming.”

“Maya, listen,” I said, as the others drew close around us, silent and terrified—trapped between an unforgiving wall of snow and a girl with godlike powers. Her wide, trembling eyes floated over me like I was speaking a foreign language. “Forget everything that happened back there.” I indicated Barrington before looking her dead in the eyes. “Right now this is all that matters. I know you're angry, but you're the only one who can stop this.”

“No one can stop it,” she muttered, sounding lost in a dream. “This is what happens to a town that makes monsters.”

“That's not true, Maya.” I locked eyes with her. “Cochran was responsible, and Cochran already got away. These are innocent people being punished. You can take all your anger and all your sadness and all your rage and turn your back and let this happen, or you can stop it.”

As I talked, I could see the familiar ripples flitting through the air around her, ducking and weaving in and out of reality. I needed them to grow. I needed those deadly indicators of her power to swell to the size of a mountain.

“I need you to think about who you want to be—like Dana and sell us all out for Bar Tech? Or are you Maya Bartoli, the girl who fights to the end?” This seemed to click; my words brought her back from the edge. It was as if she'd snapped out of a deep trance and saw us standing there for the first time. Shock turned to concern, and concern turned to resolve. She didn't have any questions about what she needed to do.