The Clash (The Permutation Archives Book 5)

by Kindra Sowder

  “Fuck,” I muttered under my breath as I ran, my legs moving with a great burst of speed and energy. “Get in the building! Now!” I shouted toward them.

  My lungs burned as I closed the distance, and just as I reached the concrete sidewalk, Fairbanks had just crossed the threshold – holding the door wide open. I slammed through, colliding with him. He held us both up and, on our feet, and I knew I only had seconds to act. We needed to keep the soldiers from coming in directly behind us. For all I knew, the doors were glass, and they could shoot their way in if we just blocked them. Maybe, if I used my ability, I could hold them shut and redirect any gunfire. Of course, the doors were probably bullet-proof anyway. I pushed my energy out to the doors, forcing the one I had just come through shut and holding all of them so that no one or anything would be coming through as long as I was in the building. I was certain with the new level of power I was experiencing after the Nano infusion, I could do it.

  Soldiers approached with loaded assault rifles, firing at the glass. Their bullets bounced off the shield I created, causing it to shimmer like blue, purple, and gray glitter moving across the surface of a bubble.

  “Shit, that was close,” Ruckus exclaimed from behind me.

  Hearing the click of another weapon, I turned to find Nero and Valdus standing behind us, guns pointed in our direction with more soldiers behind them. At least five from what I could see past Doctor Aserov and the rest.

  “Not at close as it’s going to be,” Nero said with an ugly sneer on his face – gray eyes burning into me as he stared past his own brother.

  Julius pushed past Ruckus and Ajax, toward his older brother, cursing, “You son of a bitch.”

  Nero turned his gun on Julius, gunmetal staring down gunmetal, and pulled back the hammer of his pistol, Valdus leveled his own on Julius as well, standing right next to Nero with arms almost brushing – like brothers. That made me fume just thinking of the relationship Julius used to have with Nero, making me wish for things the way they used to be. We could never go back, and we all knew it.

  “No need to call names, Julius. It’s rude,” Nero said. “And that’s close enough.”

  Valdus glanced at me through the tattoo around his eye. He looked just as he did when they left me to destroy Washington D.C. and all the people still residing there. Glaring at him, I held my power over the doors firmly, but those outside were no longer shooting now that Nero and Valdus had us on this side of the glass.

  “No, betraying your friends and family is rude, Nero. Actually, that just makes you an asshole,” Julius quipped back.

  “Mila isn’t just like me, how? She killed Cato. She betrayed us all. How can you still stand by her side after all she has done and rained down on all of us? If it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  Gaia began to laugh at that moment, almost bending over to slap her knee. She knew enough to find that thought preposterous.

  “Yes, we would, you dumb fuck. King wants power. If you hadn’t gone to his side willingly he would’ve just taken it from you anyway,” Gaia stated, attempting to sow the seeds of doubt.

  Even I could have told her it was far too late for that. Nero had been more than brainwashed at that point. He wouldn’t be coming back to our side no matter what we said to him now.

  “Well, that doesn’t matter, sis,” Valdus began, putting his pistol away in his hip holster just to remove handcuffs. “He’s got the country eating out of his hands with the Special problem. Now, he just needs to make an example out of you.”

  The soldiers behind him did the same, one person and one set of cuffs to match each of us. He was going to take us all to King, and I didn’t want to just walk in there. I wanted to go in there guns blazing. I wouldn’t be going in there without a gun in my hand or my hands-free to use my ability.

  At that moment, it was our time to continue fighting our way in, and when I met Valdus’s dark eyes as he approached me, I could tell that he knew it. He was just giving me the chance to go quietly. It wasn’t a chance I would be taking.

  Chapter

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Where is he, Valdus?” I asked, shaking my head as he neared me with the silver cuffs in hand. “You know he’s just using you like he has me. He doesn’t care about you.”

  “Jesus, do you ever shut up?” Nero snapped. “Just let him put the cuffs on your like a good girl. You’ll see dear old dad soon enough.”

  Glancing around, my eyes met Julius’ who glared at his brother but looked at me long enough to know what the plan was. He nodded, eyes cold and hard before turning back to Nero. I knew that if I fought back, the others would follow my lead. I just had to think about how hard I wanted to fight and how badly I wanted the information regarding King’s whereabouts inside the building. I wanted it just badly enough to beat the information out of Nero and Valdus – even those behind them that wanted nothing more than to tear us apart.

  The lack of sound pulled my attention in all directions, my focus moving to not only the people but my surroundings. Everything was clean and sterile. Even the scent of the place reminded me of a hospital instead of a government lab that worked with all manner of human experimentation. I expected the underlying scent of human mortality but found no such thing when I took in a deep and steadying breath in preparation for the fight that was to come.

  “So, that’s how it’s going to be?” Ryder asked, dropping his shoulders in obvious preparation for hand-to-hand combat.

  The hallway was small, but not small enough to hinder us.

  “Yup,” Nero stated, his tone irritated.

  With a laugh, I put my gun into my hip holster and the tri-dagger in its sheath and replied, “So be it.”

  Valdus was close enough now that with a well-placed fist, he would collide with the floor if I put enough power behind it. Focusing on him, I watched his foot come forward as he took another step, and took that as my cue. As soon as the sole of his boot met the white-tiled floor, I took my own step toward him and poured my energy into my closed fist, using my momentum in combination with the power. I felt it, could even see it hovering just above my flesh while it caused space-time to fluctuate around it as it sliced through the air – its trajectory my brother’s strong jaw that I was Hell-bent on shattering.

  I felt the impact of my fist against his face like a brush of butterfly wings, my power taking the brunt of it. The shock moved up through the shield, shimmering like blue and silver cascades up my arm with a ripple. It absorbed back into me quickly with a snap I felt deep in my chest. Valdus didn’t fall to the ground as I had expected. Instead, he stumbled to the side and fell into the wall, denting it with his massive body.

  That was all it took for all-out war to break out in the hallway.

  Gunfire erupted outside again, splintering the glass that my ability still held together with barely an ounce of my concentration. I heard it and felt it as each bullet slammed into the shield — like faint pinpricks across my skin with each strike.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Julius go after Nero while everyone else scattered to take on whoever came first. Both Julius and I just wanted at our brothers. We wanted to take their lives and watch the light fade from their eyes – just like how Nero had with my mother as he drained every last bit of life from her body. Then, once my abusive brother was dead at my feet, I’d move onto our sadistic father.

  Valdus recovered quickly, moving toward me with savage grace. The tattoo around his eye made him look even more sinister than he had previously, but it also made his face a much easier target – giving me something to focus on. He lashed out with a fist. I ducked under it, but when I stood erect to strike back, I was caught off guard by both hands coming at the sides of my head with open palms. They came down just over my ears, causing them to ring with painful clarity. I screamed and nearly stumbled. Thanks to the Nanos, I recover
ed quickly as a small trickle of blood made its way out of my ear canal. The blood tingled against my skin, and Valdus’ eyes went wide as he saw something there that I couldn’t. His shocked expression quickly gave way to rage. He bared his teeth and came after me again with a ferocious animal war cry.

  I kicked out with my prosthetic. His arms came down and blocked the kick, a metal clang echoing off the walls and reverberating through my entire leg. My foot came down, and when Valdus’ left arm rose to strike again, I saw something underneath his flesh I hadn’t expected. There were now exposed wires, metal, and plastic – my own false appendage had stripped off what had been placed to hide his disability, which it obviously wasn’t. He functioned just fine with the prosthetic, just like I had learned to do with my own, and it didn’t hinder him even slightly.

  Valdus smirked and said, “It looks like we’re more alike than you wanted to admit, after all, sis.”

  The words didn’t make me feel closer to him at all. They just enraged me. I was nothing like him, and I was not about to let him compare the two of us. I lashed out with everything I had as he continued to block me with his prosthetic arm, even more faux flesh being flaked away with each strike.

  “I…am... nothing…like you…” I cried out through gritted teeth.

  His words made me more determined to do what I felt was right. To end his miserable life and move on.

  All he did was laugh as we fought. He wasn’t intimidated by me in the least, but I was about to make certain that changed before this was all over between him and me. Opening my palm, I reached out as if I was going to give him an open-handed slap to the face, but I had other plans. I poured all of my power into it while keeping the shield at the doors protected from the showering of bullets. It was invisible, but I could feel it, and he did just what I expected. He went in for a forearm block, and I took my moment. Turning my hand, my palm collided with his thick forearm, and I gripped on with everything I had, pouring that same power I had pushed into my own flesh into his. Heat began to build, and Valdus’ face turned from gleeful entertainment to infuriated agony. His brow furrowed, his eyes went hard, and his mouth set into a painful grimace as he grunted and attempted to hold back his screams – each cell in his arm moving against one another in an effort to produce the same effect I had in so many others. I felt it begin to move through his systems, but a thunderclap in the air stopped it.

  All the air was zapped from my lungs within milliseconds, causing me to gasp and my lungs to burn as I let go and fell to my knees on the floor – all energy snapping back into my body like a rubber band being set free after being stretched. The others did the same, mouths open as each pull brought no sense of relief. It was as if all the oxygen had been pulled from the room, only our group suffering the effects of Nero’s power. He had learned how to better control it, choosing to leave his men unscathed to save them from our assault. I barely noticed the activity from his people except for one that was bleeding from a wound on his cheek, but that was all. Well, that and the damage to Valdus that I caused, but he took a step away from me and smirked again when he realized what happened, looking to Nero with a chuckle.

  Nero pointed at Valdus with a look of concentration on his face as we struggled and ordered, “Get on the radio and tell the guards to buckle down at the doors of the lab. We don’t know how many more of them there are, but mention we have Hunter and the rest. I’m sure he’d want to see at least her and Baker and take care of them himself.”

  As Valdus turned around and did as he was ordered, my vision began to turn black and red around the edges as oxygen deprivation began to show its effects.

  “Lock down the lab and tell King we have Hunter and Baker in our custody. Do we bring them in? Over…” he said.

  His words were muffled, but still clear enough to make out. I tried to suck air in, but nothing happened, causing me to panic. I turned to see the others who were struggling just the same, those without abilities already slumping over as if they were about to faint. Julius, myself, Jameson, Genevieve, and Baker were still upright – the struggle so apparent in Ryder, Gaia, Ajax, Ruckus, and Doctor Aserov’s faces that I worried they wouldn’t make it out. My vision began to blur, but I saw something happen in John that he tried to hide.

  He took a breath but was able to feign the struggle to breathe just enough so those moving around us to put cuffs on us couldn’t tell Nero’s power was losing effect on him. It was the Nanos. It had to be. Pulling in another, his eyes met mine, and he smiled, dropping the expression before anyone else spotted it that shouldn’t.

  My entire body began to turn into Jell-O as all life-bringing air left every cell, and I nodded at him. The Nanos didn’t seem to be working as well on me as they did on him. Of course, he had stated that there would be disadvantages considering they were indeed his Nanos and not my own. I felt my eyes bulge with terror as my heart sped up to try to save my body from its slow death. With the little bit of energy I had left to act, I mouthed one word to Baker before the black and red crept across my vision and almost blocked him completely out from sight.

  Hurry.

  “Copy that. Bring them in and kill any others with them. Over…” the garbled voice screeched over the radio.

  Panic flooded through me, the adrenaline from the words sharpening my focus as a tingling sensation started in my lungs. It had to have been the Nanos finally coming in to save me. They just needed the push of adrenaline in my system, but Baker acted before the soldier behind him could place the cuffs around his thick wrists.

  He stood quickly, butting his forehead into the closest soldier’s nose. The man screamed, and his hands went up to his face, dropping the handcuffs onto the ground with a metal clang.

  Nero yelled something unintelligible but seemed to be an order as Valdus, and the soldiers that came with them swarmed in toward us. The entire hallway turned into a whirlwind of activity as my power activated again and air whooshed into my lungs with such force I gasped – and so did the others. This was our moment. We needed to get past them and past our brothers to get to King. Now we knew where he was – in the labs – and I had a strong feeling that John knew exactly where that was.

  Valdus stepped toward me, wanting to continue our battle. Honestly, I did too, and even if he didn’t, I would see him on the ground – dead at my feet by either my ability or a bullet. I didn’t care which.

  He looked like he wanted to back off – to watch our father take me down – but I wasn’t about to let it happen.

  “Valdus, face me, you bastard!” I yelled at the top of my lungs.

  “Gladly,” he replied with a smirk, swiftly moving in my direction with long strides.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Julius take on his brother – two pairs of gray eyes cold and hard as they bore into one another. I turned my full attention back to Valdus, my target. He was large, and looming – mostly bulky action where I was light on my feet. He lunged, arms thick and massively muscled, and coming down in hopes of making contact with a closed fist. A part of me worried about the other soldiers, but I knew that the others would keep them occupied enough to keep them from infringing on our fight, which had nothing to do with them and everything to do with the kind of person our father had turned him into.

  He was tragic, dark, and violent while I was a lot the same, but different in so many ways because I was raised by someone entirely different than King.

  Valdus came down upon me, and I came up from the ground, my power pouring into my own closed fist for maximum impact. Crying out, I used every bit of energy I had within me. When my fist collided with his jaw, I felt it crack and snap – the sound of breaking bone echoing through the air. I saw his face twist in pain and his jaw slacken, his eyes slightly rolling back and then coming back into focus quickly. They settled on me, and before he could descend on me again, I kept the assault going. Not just because of the moment, b
ut vengeful in the moments before when he had helped Nero beat me to a submissive pulp before entering the Basilica.

  I let all my rage and all my frustrations out on the man, fists slamming into his shattered jaw over and over with the force of my ability stacked against him. Every impact moved through my arms and caused the shield to shimmer over and over like waves, ricocheting through my spine and my legs. My ability absorbed each blow, and Valdus almost fell to the ground but was somehow still standing – swaying slightly with blood running from the corner of his mouth and down his chin. I smirked and looked him in the eyes. He knew the fight was over – for him, at least. I could see the knowledge in his dark eyes, the tattoo stark against his sickeningly pale skin that had been tanned before my assault. He fell to his knees, his head rolling back so he could look up at me with drooping lids.

  “Our father was right,” he slurred with his broken jaw, unable to use most of his mouth to speak aside from his tongue. “You’re….” drool snaked out of the corner of his mouth, turning his blood pink instead of bright red.

  “I’m what? Amazing? Strong? Because that’s fucking right, and when I’m done with you, I’m moving in on him. You and Nero told me exactly where he is, and I barely had to try,” I stated, pointing at him. “I was kind of hoping I’d get to beat the information out of you, but I’ll definitely settle for just killing you instead.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he stated as if saying the words would make it true.

  Moving toward him, I stooped down slightly so that my gaze met his and made certain he saw the rage and hatred in my eyes. He had beaten me in the forest outside of Washington D.C., and I wasn’t the type to forgive easily. Not even a little bit. I was a different person before all of this. The entire experience had changed me into someone I barely recognized, but I didn’t care like I should have.