Unbreakable Storm

by Patrick Dugan

  Dad moved to her and set his hand on her shoulder, squeezing it. “I know it’s hard, but we don’t have another choice.”

  She lowered her head. “I know. We have to try to save Eugene and Oliver. I just wish someone else could be fighting this and leave us alone. We’ve lost enough already.”

  My heart dropped through the floor and burst into flames at the Earth’s core. We had lost enough. I’d lost everything in one terrible moment I’d relive forever. Three months of forever down and an infinity to go. I kept my mouth shut. Everyone had lost Wendi, not just me, as Mom rightly reminded me last night. The Darkest Storm had consumed millions of people in a failed attempt to conquer the world and more during the war. Would it ever be enough? I returned my attention to the conversation at hand.

  “I think the point is that we try not to lose anyone else.” Abby glanced at Blaze, who appeared to have drifted off on the other couch. “If there’s a chance medical help could cure him, I say we take it.”

  Mom nodded. “Agreed.” She turned to Abby and me. “I’m sorry. I don’t doubt either of you. You go off, and I sit here and wait. It’s terrifying.”

  A rumble from the couch made me flinch. Blaze rubbed his eyes before looking around at us. “There is a simple fix. Susan, you are going with the team. It’s about time you get some field experience.”

  Her eyes grew wide. “No, I’m not a soldier.”

  Blaze cut her off. “Nonsense. Dude, you’re the best shot here by far, and with every weapon we’ve trained in. What you don’t have is experience. You won’t know if you’ll freeze until you’ve experienced a mission.”

  Dad chimed in. “I agree, Susan.” He held up a hand to stop her protests. “This is an easy in-and-out mission. You stay with Alyx and me; the kids go into the Lair and duplicate the system and set the traps. Anything happens, you’re there to help out.”

  She wasn’t any calmer. “What if I make a mistake?”

  “Same thing we do when I screw up, Mom. We improvise and run like hell.” I’m sure the smile on my face didn’t reassure her at all, but it was worth a try.

  Abby smirked. “He does it a lot, so we’re kind of used to it.”

  “Hey!” I tried looking offended, but ended up with pathetic loser instead.

  Marcel walked into the room carrying a duffel bag and his epic laptop. “Hey, Blaze. Feelin’ any better?”

  “A bit. Makeda is quite the woman.”

  Marcel flopped on the floor, next to my feet. He opened the duffel and started pulling out items. “I modified an old backup drive case, so we can dump the whole system and bring it back up wherever we are. I’ll explain the connections to Abby and Tommy so that they can complete the transfer.” He set down the case, pulling out a gadget best described as if a Nintendo and a piece of weird alien tech had a baby. “This will allow me to verify the system is up and running on the backup before we wipe the system at the Lair. No room for accidents on this one.”

  Blaze coughed hard, but no blood showed up, so that was a relief to everyone. “The security systems won’t allow an outside system to connect. You won’t be able to verify the system. We should just booby trap it and leave it in place.”

  Marcel rolled his eyes. “Do I tell you how to do martial arts?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “No, I don’t. The device is linked to a geo-synchronized satellite the old USA claimed was a weather nav-sat. The thing could record conversations through fifty feet of concrete. I’ll remote into the backup, and we’ll know if it’s working. It can double as a secure line if anything happens to your helmet.” The pointed look I got could have frozen a woolly mammoth. He laid it next to the backup case and retrieved a USB drive. “This has the logic bomb to destroy the system, rewriting it so it thinks it’s monitoring the internal cameras. It won’t fool them, but they won’t be able to see what was there.”

  Now that show-n-tell was over, Blaze ran down the security and how to bypass it if his codes didn’t work. After the fiasco in Atlanta, nobody was taking chances with walking into a situation we weren’t prepared for. We adjourned to the tactical simulation room to lay out where everyone would be located and the extraction points. The last stop was the armory for combat suits and weapons. Mom balked but eventually selected an HK G28 sniper rifle. We all carried P320s as a sidearm since no one left Castle unarmed. For me, I could always shoot myself in the foot for a power boost. It also hid the fact there were Gifted in a fight.

  The rest of the day raced by as we finalized plans, ate, and got some sleep before Alyx arrived at 4 a.m. to transport us. I tried to sleep, but I mostly tossed and turned. I finally gave up and went to the training room to loosen up. Abby had the same idea, and from the amount of sweat on her, she’d been there for a while. With a shared nod, we fell into our routines. I’d been practicing some of her less suicidal parkour moves to improve my agility. I only face planted occasionally now. She flew through the course over and over, stopping at places to mimic pulling her pistol to fire. At three, I showered and suited up, ready to be going as the nervous energy cranked throughout my body.

  I headed for the control room to go over the gear with Marcel one last time. After Atlanta, I didn’t want anything to go wrong. Alyx stood by the window that overlooked the mechanical room talking with Mom and Dad. I gave a quick wave and sat next to Marcel. Abby joined us a few minutes later. Dad ran us through the procedure three more times, making sure we had the sequence and timing down. The plan was simple, but so had been the meeting with the Underground.

  The last step consisted of suit checks by Dad. Normally, Blaze would have done this, but his strength was limited, and nobody wanted to push him. Dad finished with Mom and turned to the group. “Stick with the plan. If things go sideways, we bolt and come up with a new plan. No heroes.” I swear he was looking at me when he said it.

  “No heroes,” we all echoed.

  “Helmets on, and we are hot.” He gave Alyx the thumbs-up, and the portal opened on the roof across from the Secret Lair. Mom, for all her protesting, moved like a seasoned vet, dropping to the ground, shimming over and dialing in the rifle’s scope. “We’re clear.”

  Dad raised the signal. Abby and I took the fire escape to the ground. I tried to be quiet while she swung like a gymnast. I hopped over the last rail and landed next to her without falling flat on my face. I doublechecked the bag with all the gear we needed. Without it, we were screwed. We scanned the street level, making sure no roving Reclaimers were about. Shift change would be at six local time, so most of the Reclaimers would be asleep at this point. Granite Falls never had issues with the Gifted population. Two thumbs-up and we moved.

  Crossing the snow-covered street left us exposed, but we made it to the door unseen, though the tracks were still in the snow. I pulled the key from my pocket, slid it home, and the heavy door opened with a shove. It had seemed a lot heavier when I had worked here. A lot had changed and not all of it for the best. I dismissed any more thoughts and focused on the mission at hand.

  Abby locked the door behind us as I moved to the front desk. I turned off the cameras; no sense leaving any evidence of our mission. Max would probably wonder in the morning why they were off, but he’d assume it happened at closing. I turned the corner and had to stop myself from blurting out “What a mess.” Before we left every night, Blaze insisted everything be cleaned spotless. Not anymore. The tables were dirty, the floors hadn’t been swept, and I could see a bin of unwashed plates sitting in the window to the kitchen. I ignored it and moved to the office.

  The office door slid open to reveal an even bigger mess. Half-eaten food and empty beer bottles lay strewn around the room. Blaze would skin Max alive if he saw this. I found the elevator controls, and the door hissed open behind us. Abby stepped in, and I followed after, putting the trash back where I found it. I shouldn’t have bothered.

  The door opened on to the safehouse, or the city dump, depending on your viewpoint. I froze. Nobody besides Blaze knew about this place. “Mr. Wizard
, we may have a problem. Somebody has been in here.”

  Dad’s voice came through next. “Abort, and we’ll come back.”

  “I think we’re fine,” Abby said softly. “It looks like someone has been partying, but nobody is here. We might not get another chance.”

  “I agree. We need ten minutes to get what we need.” I held my breath while I waited for the response.

  “Eyes open and fast.” The way Mom clipped her words told me how hard she was fighting not to pull us back. “Move, you two.”

  We moved. Pistols out, we flowed through the space, checking for hostiles. Nothing there. We stepped into the main living area where the bank of TVs and monitors cover the walls. It smelled like a brewery from all the leftover bottles. Alyx would be happy they were all from Story Tellers. I cleared the console of bottles since an avalanche of breaking glass would wake the dead. Abby crouched next to me, gun trained on the doorway leading into the part of the Lair I hadn’t seen. I got the control panel up and connected the backup. It lit up and started working.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness about this place. Maybe the mess that Blaze never allowed disturbed me. Something played at the edges of my perception that fled when I tried to examine it. I focused on the data dump, knowing it was all that mattered. I caught Abby looking over her shoulder.

  “Do you hear a clicking noise?” she asked, confused.

  I shook my head, trying to ignore whatever was setting me on edge. The need to scratch the back of my brain to get rid of the sensation drove me crazy.

  The light on the transfer flashed green. “The dump is complete,” I reported to Marcel. I removed the cord and plugged it into the cyborg Nintendo Marcel had given me. The device lit up as the contents passed through a validation check. We didn’t want to drop the logic bomb before we knew the copy had completed. I didn’t take time to disconnect it, just shoved it all back in the padded bag I carried it in.

  “It’s good to go, Surge,” came over my comm unit. “Go ahead and deliver the payload.”

  Abby had the drive with the logic bomb on it. She had turned from the console, facing the other direction. I nudged her with my elbow. “What?” she stammered. “Oh, sorry, payload.” She inserted the drive and typed in the command Marcel had her memorize. The screens flicked then faded to black. She slid the drive out and back into her pocket. “Completed.”

  “Excellent. Move to extract position,” Marcel said.

  I was missing something but couldn’t figure out what. I pulled my helmet off and looked around, trying to figure out what was wrong. Click. I heard it. Well, not really. I put my helmet back on and listened. Click. “Mr. Wizard, are you hearing a clicking noise?”

  “Negative. All audio channels are clear.”

  Click. I didn’t hear it as much as feel it in my head. A quick examination of the entry and kitchen didn’t reveal anything but the mess we saw when we got here. Abby had crossed the main room, heading toward the door in the right-hand wall. I jogged over to check on her. I put my hand on her shoulder but got no response. Usually, it would have earned me an elbow to my ribs. I tapped on her faceplate, and she flinched. “What’s going on?” I asked, fighting back the uneasy sensation I had been experiencing.

  She pulled off her helmet; I followed suit. We both used the belt hooks to hold the helmets out of the way. “Tommy, there’s something in there. Can’t you hear it?”

  “All I hear is a clicking noise.”

  “It’s more than that. Something is trying to break into my mind. I think my head may split wide open.”

  “Well, there’s only one way to find out.” I closed the remaining distance and opened the door. The smell of a gas station bathroom in the middle of summer hit me like a sledgehammer. Trash covered the floor of the thirty or so feet of hallway. A moaning noise came from one of the rooms down the hall. Each wall had three doors set into them; another sat open at the very end. I moved slowly, focusing my energy so I could respond to any attack. The clicking noise stopped, replaced by a voice in my head. “Help me,” it repeated over and over. The edges of my sight went foggy as the voice demanded my attention. I followed the sound, unwilling or unable to resist its pull. I stepped into the open doorway and froze.

  The sight of a bloody body laid against the far wall snapped me out of my fog. Our easy mission had just gotten hard.

  27

  I wish I’d been startled, and the person laid out across from me was just sleeping or unconscious. I stepped closer to get a better look. Something cracked under my boot. Blood oozed out from where my foot had landed. I lifted my foot, and something red and wet dropped to the floor. I focused on the man’s corpse ahead of me. He’d been mutilated; deep scorch marks crossed his arms and chest. His right arm ended in a burnt, severed stump. One of his eyes hung from the socket; the other socket sat empty. I fought not to vomit.

  Bloody handprints decorated the wall in a grisly piece of art. I followed the wall, seeing other body parts, discarded by whoever ran this house of horrors. One of the beds held two arms still chained to the bedpost. A low snarl from behind notified me Abby had snapped out of her fog as well.

  I followed the gruesome path, checking each bed as I went. The furthest bed held a person.

  I signaled Abby to watch behind us as I moved closer to the prone figure where they laid chained to the bed. “There’s a dead body and another captive. I’m investigating now,” I whispered into my mic, eyes scanning to make sure nothing else lurked here.

  I came to the foot of the bed and gasped. The captive turned out to be a woman dressed in a hospital gown that barely covered any of her. Her right arm had an IV drip attached to it, the needle piercing a tattoo of the deathly hallows symbol. I’d know her blue and purple hair anywhere.

  I holstered my pistol and took her hand. “Mimi, it’s Tommy. Can you hear me?”

  Her head lolled toward me, mouth dropping open, allowing saliva to drool down her cheek. “Hey, Sport.” Her eyes closed, and her breathing stilled. I reached out and checked her pulse, which was still there. I grasped the bedside cuff, thinking to shock it open, but stopped, wondering if the shock would hurt Mimi in the process. “Abby, I need you.”

  She moved quickly, never lowering her pistol in the process. I pulled my helmet off the clip on the back of my belt, settled it in place, flipped open the visor, and pulled my revolver to cover the door.

  Abby stopped dead in her tracks as she saw Mimi’s bruised face and emaciated body. “I’ll kill whoever did this.” Her voice was thick with anger. She broke the bars holding the handcuffs, snapping the free cuff around each extremity. She tore strips from the bedsheets and padded each set of cuffs to reduce the noise. Since stealth was the main objective, it made a lot of sense.

  A soft beep sounded, but I didn’t see anyone approaching from where I stood. “We need to go,” I said, moving closer to the door.

  Abby pushed her helmet on before sweeping Mimi up to carry her like a sleeping child off to safety.

  I cued the comm-link. “We’ve found a survivor. Bringing her out with us.”

  Marcel’s shocked voice came over the earpiece. “Survivor?”

  “Stow it.” Dad snapped. “Surge, meet us at the extraction point.”

  “Affirmative.”

  I signaled to Abby, and we moved slowly up the hall. I took in all the details I’d missed on the way in. Specks of blood on the floor, smears of something dark on the floors and walls, and dents in some of the doors along the way. My heart warred with my head, wanting me to stop and check for other survivors, but we’d been there too long, and every moment could be the one that got us caught.

  I stepped into the living room, noticing I’d left the console up in my fog. I ran over and closed it but decided against putting the mess back because of the clock ticking in the back of my head. It would have to be enough. Abby had her back against the wall, out of sight of the entryway and kitchen area. I turned to signal her when I noticed we weren’t alone. A fi
gure dressed in black stood in front of the elevator door. I knew him instantly since he’d been the assistant manager at the Lair for as long as I’d been coming here. It was Max, who’d been left in charge when Blaze left.

  “We’ve got company,” I said softly into my comm-link. I snapped my faceplate down. “Get out of the way; I don’t want to hurt you.”

  He laughed. “You can’t hurt me, even if you wanted to. I thought I smelled food and there you were.”

  I’d been called a lot of things in my life, but never food. “Whatever.” I needed to get us out of here as fast as possible; who knew if he’d contacted the authorities. “Step aside, and I’ll be out of here.”

  Max scoffed at me. “Why would I want to do that?” He pulled a pistol from the back of his pants and pointed it at me. Blaze would have had a fit; you never carry a gun anywhere but in an approved holster. It’s an accident waiting to happen. Though in this case, I wish he’d shot himself in the ass.

  “I’m walking out of here regardless.” I glanced to where Abby stood. She gently lowered Mimi to the floor, so she had her arms free. “You can get out of my way or I can move you, your choice.”

  He laughed again, a joyless sound like fingernails on a chalkboard. “Tommy, I knew your Gift would be strong. I could smell it on you when you came in the store.”

  I froze. My faceplate had been up, but I doubted he’d seen my face. I didn’t have to wait long for an answer.

  “You see, every Gifted has a unique smell about them, and the stronger the Gift, the more obvious the odor.” He stepped closer. “The silent alarm triggered when you turned off the cameras. I thought maybe some kids had broken in, but when I smelled your scent, I knew you were here.”

  “Scent? Are you a dog of some kind?” I asked, trying to lure him closer to where Abby could grab him.

  An irritated look crossed his face. “Hardly. I feed off Gifted and become more powerful when I do so. I’d always been forced to procure my own sources, but then Blaze left me the Lair, where I could pick who I wanted.”