Power (16 page)

“Cool?” I looked at him with amusement. “I say I’m open to … dating or something and your response is ‘cool’?” God help me, I giggled.

“Yeah, I mean, we’re nineteen.” He laughed lightly. “Shit is crazy grim around here, but every once in a while I remember that we’re really not that old. I mean, can you believe this? We’d be a year out of high school if we were normal people, settling into the first job or finishing up freshman year of college. Instead, we get to save the world from some group of crazy super-powered villains who have a mad-on for you.”

That took the air out of the conversation, at least on my end. I lapsed into a long silence, wondering what my life would be like if I’d just been born a normal person like Scott suggested. I thought about a red dress I’d bought long, long ago, that had perished in an explosion on a night that had felt like the end of my world. I’d bought it with my first Directorate paycheck because I’d seen it, in all its short hem and sleeveless glory, and thought about what it would feel like to wear it.

It’d feel like I was normal.

“I can’t construct much out of ‘if only’s,’” I said, snapping the door closed on nostalgia. “We’re here and we’re stuck with the job that we have. That’s all there is.” I closed my mouth and felt my lips purse. “That and … maybe some possibilities once it’s all over.”

Scott looked only slightly chastened, but he paused before responding. “So … when the word gets out about us … what do you think is gonna happen?”

“I don’t know exactly,” I said, shaking my head. “Nothing good. My record gets opened to the public, I imagine it’s not going to turn out well for me. Foreman promised me a pardon before this all started, but who knows if he’ll be able to deliver once public pressure lands on him.” I shrugged.

“But you’re still digging in to fight anyway,” he said in a tone that sounded slightly awestruck.

“What else am I going to do?” I asked. “Run away? Try and save my own ass?”

“You took out Sovereign’s mechanism for hunting metas,” Scott said. “Yeah, you could run.”

“Hrm,” I said with a weak smile. “I may have killed most of his telepaths, but he’s still got Claire, who hates me.” I frowned. “Or Century still has Claire, anyway, depending on the status of their breakup. Not to mention the fact that he’s a pretty powerful telepath himself.” I gave him a sad smile. “We may have granted a temporary reprieve to the metas of the U.S. by taking shotguns into that Vegas safe house, but we didn’t end Sovereign’s ability to kill us all if he’s still of a mind to.”

Scott let his eyes go a little unfocused, and I could tell something was on his mind. He caught me looking and faked a smile. “Hey, so—”

“What were you thinking just then?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, and it was so obvious he was lying he might as well have had stamped it on his forehead. He knew I knew, and he hesitated again. “Not a big deal.”

“It’s something,” I said. “Just say it.”

He tensed up. “All right, fine. About … Sovereign … and what he wants. Have you thought about …” He stopped, as if he couldn’t even complete the sentence.

“Giving him what he wants?” I spread my arms wide. “Offering myself or pretending to do so in order to get him to stop?” I shrugged. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it.”

Scott made a face, and not a sexy one. “I should have guessed that you’d have considered all options.”

“It wouldn’t work,” I said. “He is a telepath, after all, and while Zollers can block him to some extent, I can pretty well guarantee that the old ‘Surrender while you pull a fast one on the enemy’ trick won’t work with him. He’s not much of an evil overlord, but he’s not a total idiot. Anything I do that sends me lovingly in his direction without real sincerity will provoke enough of his suspicion that he’ll use his powers to sniff out my intentions.” I clapped my hands together lightly and Scott jumped as though I’d fired a shot at him. “Game over. Because I’ll always think of him as a mass murderer first.”

Scott nodded slowly. “Nice to know I don’t have any competition from him, at least.”

I smiled, but weakly. “That’s safe to say.”

Scott lapsed into thought. “But if he doesn’t have any hope of ever winning you over—”

I was fortunate because my phone rang at that exact moment, sparing me from having to go down the path that question would inevitably lead me to. “Yes?” I asked, grateful for the interruption.

“Heyyyyy,” J.J. said from the other end. “I think I’ve got something here.”

“As long as it’s not a rash, I’m interested,” I said, and shrugged at Scott when he gave me a WTF look.

“Well, it looks like our old friends at the Wise Men’s Consortium have just made an investment in real estate in the Minneapolis area,” J.J. said, ignoring my wisecrack.

I stood there, looking blankly ahead. “I don’t … have any friends at that corporation. I don’t even know who they are—”

“Sure you do,” J.J. said. “They’re the ones who rented the Century safe houses around the country. They’re the ones who chartered that cargo plane that was taking you out of the city.”

Right. I let out a sharp gasp. “And they bought something here?”

“Money transfer just showed up, but it probably happened a few days ago,” J.J. said. “I’m kind of a little behind in what I can do, you know, working with a staff of one—”

“You can have whatever staff you want,” I said then realized the awkward entendre I’d inadvertently just handed him. “Uhm, or hire people, I mean, if you think it will help you. But about this purchase—”

“Righto,” he said. “It’s a warehouse in St. Louis Park, about half an hour away—”

“I know where St. Louis Park is,” I said, hiding my impatience.

“—just outside Minneapolis, first ring suburb, brushing up against Eden Prairie—”

I rolled my eyes. “Address?”

“Sure, sure,” he said, and I scrambled for a pen as he gave it to me. “Now, about this staff thing … who do I talk to about—”

“You can talk to Ariadne about your staf—” I cut myself off again and just hung up the phone instead of bothering to try and dig myself out of that verbal mess. “We’ve got something,” I said to Scott, holding up the piece of paper with the address scrawled on it.

“What are we going to do?” he asked, and I thought I caught a little excitement in his gaze. “Go in, shotguns-a-blazin’?”

I only had to think about it for a second. “Not quite,” I said, and felt myself smile again. “Not this time.”

Chapter 27

I stood over a computer console a few hours later, with Foreman next to me, Reed and Scott lurking behind us. Ariadne hovered near the door mostly, I think, because she wanted to observe without getting in the way. I was okay with that.

I was standing over the shoulder of a woman named Harper, who was as serious as anyone I’d ever met. When she’d offered me her hand, she didn’t give me the dead fish handshake, she pumped with some strength. Not trying to crush my hand or anything, but enough that I knew she’d shook hands with me. She’d not indicated whether Harper was a first or last name, but I suspected it was last because of her ex-military bearing.

“Man,” Scott said from behind me. “That is so cool. You can see everything.”

We were all staring at a flatscreen perched in front of Harper. It was big enough to give us a fairly panoramic view. She had two smaller screens on either side, computer monitors we’d had on hand. She was fiddling with the complicated briefcase-based computer she’d brought along, handing us HDMI cables and asking us to sort out where to place them while she set up. I admired her brass; not many people tell the head of a government agency what they need in such brisk terms.

Being a fan of the no-bullshit approach myself, I liked it.

We were staring at the screens, which displayed a top-down view of a building. A warehouse. One of the smaller monitors had a clear-as-day picture, but the one on the main screen was on infrared. We could see five bodies moving around inside the warehouse through the walls, orange masses with human appendages and heads. Harper fiddled with her interface and the picture zoomed closer, focusing on where three of the people stood talking in an office in the corner of the warehouse.

Like Scott said, it was cool.

“How high up is the drone?” I asked Harper.

“That’s classified,” Harper said neutrally, as if she were telling me the sky was blue.

Reed was standing next to him, just shaking his head. “Like I said, totalitarian surveillance state.”

I just shook my head at him. “Yeah, yeah, I’m not arguing with you. But since we live here anyway, I might as well use it to my advantage.” Reed rolled his eyes, but I saw the hint of concession within them. What else can you do to keep surveillance on your enemies when they’ve got a telepath that can pick you up a mile off?

Well, actually, I had an idea for that, too, but it didn’t come with real-time, down-looking infrared imagery of the Century facility.

“We’ve got movement in the southwest quadrant,” Harper said flatly. “Town car. MARS ONE is rolling up.”

I looked at the left-hand screen and saw what she was talking about after a moment of searching. There were actually a lot of cars moving on that screen, given that there were a few major thoroughfares among the surrounding streets. Once I saw the town car, I figured out how she’d picked it out. It was the only vehicle for about six blocks on that particular street. Sharp eyed, this Harper.

“Comms?” I asked, and Harper nodded once before flicking a button on her console. A speaker came on, presumably filtered out of what was going to her headset a moment earlier. Then I realized: she was listening to the car’s chatter the whole time, and presumably had been in communication with them. I hadn’t even realized it.

“Can they hear me right now?” I asked. Harper gave me a sharp nod. “Janus, are you there?”

Harper gave me an “Are you stupid?” kind of look. “MARS ONE, this is MARS SIX. What is your status, over?” she asked, making me feel like an utter and complete amateur.

“What?” Janus’s voice came over the speaker. “Oh, is that us? Oh. MARS SIX, this is … uhm … MARS ONE. We are settling into position and attempting to place the laser on the target.” He paused for a good five seconds. “Oh, uhm, over.”

“Understood, MARS ONE,” Harper said and flipped a switch on her console. I could still hear the fuzzing and fritzing of the speakers, so I assumed she had turned off the microphone on our side.

“Nifty little thing,” Scott said. “What’s with the speakerphone on the drone controls?”

“We sometimes have to operate in unusual locations,” Harper said, not taking her eyes off the screens in front of her. “The communications capability in the system is designed so we can receive orders from units in the field or a commanding officer who’s offsite.” She shook her head. “This is a new application, I have to admit.”

I stared down at her. “Do you have any idea what you’re into here, Harper?”

She shook her head, expression moving not a whit. “No, ma’am, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

I exchanged a look with Scott, who shrugged. “Fair enough,” I said.

“Laser is in place,” Janus said over the speaker. “Err … oh … I mean, the target is painted. Is that the code phrase? Gods, but I’m rubbish at these communications protocols. Can we not speak plainly?”

Harper sighed audibly and flipped the switch. “Negative, MARS ONE. While the presumption is that these channels are secure, adding an additional layer of communication security is—”

“Pipe down, MARS ONE,” I cut her off. “Just do your job.”

“Job done,” Janus said sourly, and then his voice switched to a stiffer-sounding octave. “Will await further instructions. Over.”

“Now that they’ve painted that warehouse window with the laser,” I said, “does that mean we can—”

“Yeah,” Harper said, cutting me off again. She flipped another switch on her console and another series of voices came on. They sounded a little farther away, a little tinny, but I could understand every word they were saying.

“—two days,” came a female voice with an Asian accent. I couldn’t quite place it, but she was speaking English. “We just need to wait until then.”

There was a pause, and I spoke. “So this is what’s being said right now in that room?” I gestured to the infrared display where the three people were talking in the warehouse room.

“Correct,” Harper said, precise. “The laser your people are shining onto that window from a few blocks away is picking up the vibrations of their speech on the glass pane of the window and transmitting them to us via a transceiver in the unit—”

“Nifty,” Reed said, again with the sour. “You’re just finding more ways to illustrate my point about—”

“Can it,” I said, waving a hand at him without looking up from the display.

“How many of them are coming?” a man asked. His voice sounded vaguely European.

“All of them,” came the Asian woman’s voice again.

“Here?” the guy asked.

“Not here, exactly,” she said. “A little further out. Somewhere more isolated, secluded. I—” She paused, and I didn’t like the sound of it for some reason.

“Can they detect the laser?” I asked. “Could you see it, a little red beam dancing over the walls?”

“No.” Harper shook her head. “It’s outside the visual spectrum.”

“It’s a laser,” came the woman’s voice, cold and clear.

“What the hell?” Scott asked.

“Shit,” Harper said, more than a little chastened. “I have no idea how they would have picked that up.” There was a rustling in the room and the sound of a door opening, followed by shouts of alarm in an echoing room I took to be the warehouse proper.

“Janus, get out of there,” I said, then looked at Harper. “Can he hear me?”

“Negative,” she said, and flipped a switch again. “MARS ONE, are you receiving?”

“—coming right for us!” Janus’s voice came through the speaker, more than a little panic edging out of it.

“Whoa,” Scott said, and he took a step forward. “They’re fast if they got there in seconds—”

“The audio from the warehouse was on a delay while I answered your questions,” Harper said, looking pained. She was punching buttons and pulling up visual imagery. I saw the infrared catching five human figures moving swiftly toward the town car, and then a flare of white in the shape of a ball that flew from one of the people at the fore and—