The Next Chronicle (Book 1): Next (17 page)

Ray saw nothing. Or rather, he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

The city spread out below in every direction. This was nothing like the impromptu flight in Archer's car. Then, he had been weightless, cocooned in steel and strapped to his seat. Now, but for the uncomfortable tug of the harness, he could be flying under his own power.

“
Do you see anything?” Phillip asked.

“
No,” Ray said with a shake of his head. And it was true. Thomas Maggard's telltale flare of power was nowhere to be found.

Which by no means meant that Ray wasn't witnessing plenty.

Six hundred feet below (they had descended to get a better view) was a startling and beautiful tapestry. The colors of the world blended together with the infinite shades of green marking the power of the Surge. Humans walked down city streets, simultaneously dark shadows in the flows of emerald, and softly colored in all the hues people came in. The Surge itself varied as it stretched across every surface and vanished into the horizons, from the faded mint of sea foam to the darkest emerald.

And that was just the buildings.

Cars carrying Next moved down the chosen route, and those were the most interesting of all. It was impossible to tell the difference between agents and civilians. Though the metal of the vehicles dimmed their glow, Ray could mark each of them individually. Even from this height and through solid metal he could sense the differing vibrations, the pattern of the Surge as it was absorbed and changed by their bodies.

To his senses it was like a song, but on a wider and deeper level than mere sight and hearing. He
felt
them, the thrum of power from each as unique as snowflakes. The experience was hypnotic, which was distracting. It wasn't like this when he left his body behind to travel down the lines of energy woven through the Surge. Something about seeing with his normal senses changed things, made falling down the rabbit hole of fascination a problem to worry about. It took an effort not to zone out in the face of such variable majesty.

His part in the plan was simple and made simpler by the corralling of every Next onto one main route. It meant a lot of needless driving and backtracking by the agents in the cars, but Ray didn't care. The vein of pulsing green energy moving down the road was like a lighthouse. It was impossible to miss and made it easy for him to track every moving Next energy signature.

Not that it would be hard to tell Thomas from the rest. Even the strongest Black Band in the group, who happened to be holding Ray aloft at that very moment, didn't burn half as bright. If the boy showed up, he would blaze like a shooting star.

Forty minutes into the operation, he did.

“Incoming on the east side,” Ray said over the radio. “He's going to hit the main route.”

Kit scrambled toward the cab of the SUV, but Ben beat her to it. The truck lurched forward and tore down the road, passing the third wave of transport vehicles.

“On our way,” Kit said into her mic. “Location?”

“
I'm watching you now,” came Ray's reply. “You're only about a thousand feet from where he'll hit. He isn't moving very fast, but he's running straight along a side road. He'll beat you there.”

Ben laid on the horn, its blaring complimented by angry shouts for other cars to move out of the way. Kit pushed the headset against her ear, stomach cramped as she awaited updates.

“He's there,” Ray said. “Want me to move in?”

“
No!” she nearly shouted in reply. “We can't risk you down there. Stay where you are. What's he doing?”

Ray's reply took a few seconds. “He's standing in the road—no, strike that. He's hovering over it. Our vehicles are stopping, and they're getting backed up.”

“Shit,” Kit said.

“
Yeah, doesn't look good,” Ray replied.

She hadn't meant to transmit her swearing, but why not? With the cars stopping, the last leg of the route would become a slaughterhouse. The standing order was to wait for the kid to attack before engaging. Archer and Kit wanted to stop him peacefully if at all possible.

“Director,” Ray said. “No one is exiting their vehicles. Weren't the volunteers supposed to form up and surround him if he showed up?”

Kit understood instantly. She keyed her mic for all units. “This is Singh. All agents and volunteers to converge on my GPS. The target is holding multiple vehicles hostage.” Left unsaid was the truly frightening concept of how powerful the boy must be to stop the forward motion of so many cars as well as keep the occupants from breaking out of them. Several agents trapped out there were easily capable of shattering the glass.

She had barely finished the thought when they crested a small hill and came upon the scene.

Three Black Bands flew from their observation posts on the roofs of buildings along the route. They approached from different directions, a tactic one of the telekinetic agents had suggested. Much like using teamwork against any enemy, it was meant to split the attention of the target and leave at least one side exposed. Telekinetics were especially weak in that way given the effort of will it took to turn thoughts into power, and the fact that most telekinetic Next had to channel their ability in a given direction.

Thomas Maggard knew nothing about limits.

The kid didn't bat an eye at the three adults flying at him. He didn't move at all from his position a few feet above the pavement. The Black Band directly in front of Thomas was closing in at highway speeds when an invisible hand drove him straight down, leaving a deep depression in the road.

Kit's hand was halfway to the door handle when the two Black Bands flanking Thomas were smacked through the air like a pair of volleyballs. She didn't see what happened to the one who circled around to come from the south. This was due to either incredible aim or sheer luck, because the third Black Band suddenly filled the world in front of her.

She dropped at the last possible moment, her tiny body falling into the space in front of the passenger seat. The pained screech of metal shredded her ears as broken glass pattered across her head and shoulders. The SUV rocked and tipped from the impact before slamming back down on its tires. Kit's chair was torn completely from its bolts. Sudden light poured in from the rear, capturing her attention. Without so much as a gesture, the little boy had managed to swat one of the most powerful beings alive
through
her car.

She saw the body tumble through the air, skipping like a stone across the asphalt and coming to a stop a hundred feet away. Cold certainty that it was a body now, rather than a living person, gripped her insides. Blood trailed out along the path in a volume not usually seen outside of horror movies or slaughterhouses.

“You okay?” Ben asked.

Kit looked over at him, frozen behind the wheel, and nodded. “You?”

“Not hurt,” he said. “But the kid saw me. He's holding me still. I can't move.”

Kit swore under her breath. “I'm heading out there. If he loses hold of you, don't try to help. Get down or run if you can.”

Ben shook slightly, as if he were trying to shake his head but failing. “You can't. He'll kill you.”

She gave him a crooked grin. “He tried before. I got this.”

Before Ben could protest again, Kit slithered toward the back of the van on her belly. She tried to keep her movements minimal, to appear weak. If Ray could see the Surge through solid objects, chances were the kid could, too. Better to move like she was wounded if that was the case.

Despite her words, Kit was fighting off abject terror. Ben was almost certainly right; Thomas would kill her in a direct confrontation. He had just killed at least one Black Band with no visible effort. The boy was probably aware of her rustling toward the missing back of the SUV, and unconcerned. Whatever primal drive was piloting his brain didn't recognize her as a threat. Kit's powers simply weren't in the same league. Hell, they weren't even in the same statistical universe.

At the ragged edge of the SUV's torn rear end, she pulled the pulse gun and put a hand to her ear. The headset was gone. Blind panic welled up again, strong as the ocean, and Kit was trying to fight it back with an oar. She was cut off from her teams. Blind to their movements and even to the street beyond. The kid had almost killed her a few days before.
Had
killed Towney. The tacky wetness of the man's blood was so real in that flash of memory she could almost feel it.

Gritting her teeth and forcing herself to breathe, Kit wrestled the panic. The act of finding the strength to fight it was a form of relief in itself. Her heart slowed, her head cleared, and her hands stopped vibrating against the grip of the pulse gun.

Think, think. What to do? Jumping out without a game plan was a death warrant. She needed information, but she couldn't even see what was happening without risking being turned into a smear on the road.

“
Idiot,” she said to herself in a low voice. She had trained for this very situation.

Kit routed everything into her senses. Hearing was the most important. The background noise of the city went from a low hum of white static to a vibrant symphony of sounds. She could differentiate the distance of vehicles based on the volume of their tires humming. One of the buildings nearby was not evacuated as her office had requested; two people were having loud sex in an upper apartment.

Much closer, Kit could hear the drumming of fists and shoes on metal and glass. The people trapped inside the cars were trying to get out. There were no Black Bands inside them, only agents. Not that it mattered. Given the ease with which Thomas Maggard had defeated three of them, she wasn't sure strength at any level would help in the escape. Not for the first time since she walked into the Maggard house, Kit reminded herself to study how telekinesis worked.

She focused on the muffled voices coming from the handful of cars. Some were crying, some shouting, and as she listened, the low groan of straining metal washed out every one of them.

“He's crushing the car,” said one of the voices.

That changed things. Kit couldn't afford to wait and have more information. If the boy was actively trying to kill, she would have to do something regardless of whether she had help.

Hoping to break his concentration, Kit screamed at the top of her lungs and launched herself into view.

Normally, throwing herself sideways and firing a weapon would have been first on Kit's list of Things Not To Do. Flinging your body out in an action-movie dive, complete with slow motion, looks really cool. Practically speaking, you might as well be a fish for the degree of vulnerability in such a move. That's ignoring what it does to your ability to aim. In the movies, Chow Yun Fat always lands on his side, having shot the villain in the forehead while the damsel looks on with big doe eyes.

In reality, you don't get very far, your shot is thrown way off, and broken collarbones are not out of the question.

Kit had no other choice. If the kid could see her moving even through the SUV, she had to move fast. Also, while movies were just movies, she actually did have a few advantages that tempered the negative consequences of her leap.

As her body stretched sideways through the air, Kit brought all her focus into her coordination and ancillary senses. The senses no one talks about, like knowing where your body is in relation to itself, sense of balance, hand-eye coordination. For reasons she did not fully understand, her brain lumped all of those abilities into a single unit. It was this conglomeration of subtle systems Kit enhanced with the excess Surge energy her body carried.

The pulse gun discharged as promised. There was no visible sign, no beam of light or nifty sound effect. The gun emitted a deep vibration as the mechanism inside burst to life and blasted out a focused electromagnetic pulse. Though she had only a fraction of a second to sight her target and aim, Kit knew the shot would be perfect. It wasn't a conscious process, just a knowledge that her enhanced powers were doing their thing.

Thomas must have seen her move. That was the only rational explanation for what happened next.

The third Black Band was yanked between the pulse gun and Thomas Maggard just as Kit pulled the trigger. The shot that would have scrambled his abilities instead discharged against the unconscious man. It wasn't a total failure. Kit saw the little boy stagger, followed by several windows breaking in the captured vehicles. Whatever grip he had on them had been loosened if not broken by the reduced shot from the pulse gun.

Kit rolled to her feet and was ready to shoot. She stepped around the floating form of the Black Band to take aim. Thomas, though weakened, was not finished. With a grunt, the child sent the powerless Black Band soaring into the air. Kit reacted on instinct, dashing like a football player to catch the helpless man.

She leaped high, spinning her body in the air to catch his weight and create a buffer. Then gravity took over, and Kit winced as she and the pavement caught up on old times.

By the time she got back up, Thomas Maggard was nowhere to be seen.

Ben stumbled from the remains of the SUV a moment later, one hand held to his face. Cuts crisscrossed his forehead and snaked across his scalp. Kit rushed to help him, lowering him to the ground.

“Go check on the others,” he said. He shrugged out of his coat, awkwardly trying to keep a hand over the worst of his wounds. “I'll live.” Kit took the coat and wadded it for him, earning a grateful smile as he pressed the coarse fabric against his head.

The man who had been hurled through the SUV was indeed dead. Had probably been that way from the second his body hit. The sight was terrible beyond description. The best that could be said about it was that most of him was still there, if torn and shredded beyond recognition.

“Director!”

Kit trotted back to the damaged convoy vehicles. Several agents stood with weapons drawn. In the distance she could make out specks growing large in the sky as Black Bands approached. The man who called for her stood at the front of the gathered agents and their charges, who were beginning to pile out of the line of black cars.

“Anyone hurt here?” Kit asked the agent, a man named Davies.

Davies shook his head. “Only a few cuts and scrapes from breaking windows, and that's just agents. No civilians harmed.”

“We've got a dead Black Band,” Kit said in a low voice.

It was to Davies' credit that his only reaction was a slight widening of the eyes. “How?”

Kit shrugged. “I don't know. Their invulnerability can be overcome with enough force. Hard to imagine that kid is strong enough to do it in a single hit...” Kit stared back in the direction of the dead man. “Every volunteer had primary invulnerability. This shouldn't be possible.”

She surveyed the vehicles. Aside from the missing windows, they didn't appear to be in terrible shape. There was some obvious buckling in the panels where Thomas Maggard squeezed them with his mind, but nothing apparent keeping them here. Kit turned back to Davies.

“How many of those cars are working? I need you to get these people to the facility.”

Davies shook his head. “None of them. First thing the drivers tried when that kid flew off. Whatever he did must have damaged the engines.”

“Shit,” Kit said, thinking. “Keep an eye out. If you see anything, yell at me. I'm going to make a few calls.”

Despite the OSA and Homeland Security orders to keep the streets clear, the media and curious onlookers appeared minutes after the attack. There was no stopping them. Kit did her best to mitigate the damage by demanding everyone keep back a hundred feet, but she couldn't hide the destruction or the body. She had put her coat over the dead man's upper body and face. Not because she feared pictures or video finding their way to the news outlets, but because he had died serving others. Kit owed him what little dignity she could offer.