by Jade Kerrion
“Yes, of course.” Reyes gestured at the empty chair across from Danyael.
“Thank you.” The general sat, unfolded his beige napkin, and placed it in his lap. “I’m sorry I haven’t seen much of you. Work keeps me busy.” The general took a hard look at Danyael. “You look better.”
“I am,” Danyael said. “Thanks to Carson and Jana.”
The general nodded. “They’re excellent. I’m very lucky to have them on my team.”
Reyes looked around the cafeteria. “I’m amazed at the level of control you have over the assault group. Danyael and I have been here for a month, and the outside world still hasn’t the faintest clue that we’re here.”
The general’s smile was wry. “It would serve no one any purpose to tell the world that Danyael is here. The Mutant Assault Group has far bigger issues than harboring an innocent man.”
“Such as?”
“Dealing with the threat of shut down.” The general paused to take a bite out of his fried chicken. “It’s not the first time, nor will it be the last. I am not a political man, and my prejudices are well known. I don’t have many friends in the military. Every now and again, one of my enemies will take a run at the assault group and attempt to shut it down on the grounds of budget shortfalls and other ridiculous nonsense.”
“But you weren’t always in the assault group, were you, General?” Reyes asked.
“No, I used to be Army. Earned my stars there, as a matter of fact. I was certain that mutants were destined to be the face of the military and convinced the army to let me lead a small mutant task force.” His smile was reflective and proud. “We did well. Hell, we did so well we beat the Ranger and SEAL teams in war games, several times as a matter of fact.” The general shook his head. “Their generals and admirals didn’t like it. They changed the rules of the game and piled limitations on my team until their blasted teams finally won. When they did, the generals used that victory to justify their decision to shut down my team.”
The general stared at his plate and pushed it aside, his appetite apparently lost. “One of my subordinates couldn’t take it. The army, the unit, was his whole life. When he was dismissed, he went back to his barracks, took a gun, and shot his brains out.” He released his breath in a sigh. “I lost a good man that day. I decided to do something for him, for all the mutants who never get a chance, so I petitioned to start a separate military group, focused primarily on mutants. That’s how the assault group got its start.”
“But you’re not a mutant,” Reyes noted.
The general sat back and threw his arms up in the air. “I don’t have to be a mutant to see what is as plain as the light of day. Mutants are the future of the military. Unlike my colleagues in the armed forces, I’m not threatened by mutants. They’re human, just like the rest of us, just different. Why suppress them? We should be using them to spearhead the future instead of locking them in prison under false pretenses.” He paused. “You look surprised, Danyael.”
“I didn’t realize you felt that way,” Danyael said.
The general shrugged, reaching for his glass of water. “My views are well known among the military divisions. Use the best tool that can be applied in that situation. Human, mutant, it doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter, if our focus is where it should be, on winning the war.”
“But why would the other military units want to shut you down?”
“Politics. My views differ significantly from theirs, and they have industry support, because they buy equipment. Mutants don’t need equipment. My men can handle weapons as well as anyone else, but their minds are the weapons. Industry support is important, though, because it supplements our military budgets, which are increasingly squeezed. A division as small as mine, as independent as mine, is always under threat.”
“What happens if you’re shut down?” Reyes asked, brow furrowing.
The general’s lips twitched, a ghost of a smile. “I retire, but the work will go on.” He shook his head and sighed heavily. “The future will be owned by mutants, like it or not. The sooner we accept that fact, the happier we all will be.”
“That’s very philosophical,” Reyes said.
“At our age, we have to be. We can only observe, and if we’re lucky, guide. The future belongs to the young, the powerful, like Danyael. Don’t you think so?”
Danyael’s answer was careful. “I don’t know.”
Reyes cast a glance at Danyael. “General, we’ve been here a while now, and I could use something to do. I’m sure Danyael feels the same way. Nothing rejuvenates like fresh purpose.” He looked at the general. “Perhaps he could help out at the infirmary.”
The general leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers across his stomach. “We would welcome another doctor. And thank you, by the way, for what you did for Major Chandler. Still, our need isn’t dire. Carson is good, but even he is merely a stopgap until we can get our soldiers to a hospital for medical care. The two of you are the first real patients he has had in a while.”
“Somewhere else then?” Reyes asked.
“I’ll think about it. I’m sure we can find something.” The general pushed up from his chair and picked up his tray, his dinner scarcely touched. “It was good catching up with you. Call me if you need anything.”
The general left, accompanied by aides who shoved down their meals and scrambled to follow him. Reyes turned back to Danyael. “You don’t trust him, do you?”
Danyael averted his gaze. “I’m trying.”
“Has he given you any reason to doubt him?”
“No, he hasn’t.”
“This isn’t for him, Danyael.” Reyes leaned forward. “You heard him. He doesn’t need another doctor. This is for you. You need to get back out there where your powers are needed, where you are needed.”
Danyael stared at his misshapen hand. It was one thing to use his powers in an emergency to save lives, quite another to actually work for the Mutant Assault Group. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”
“Ready to do what?” Reyes challenged. “Help others? It’s what you do, Danyael. It’s who you are.”
A piercing alarm, a series of five short blasts, rang through the cafeteria. Uniformed men and women scrambled from their seats and raced out of the building. Danyael grabbed the arm of a passing lieutenant. “What’s happening?”
“Training accident,” the soldier explained breathlessly. “Must be a bad one, or the general wouldn’t have summoned all of us. We’ll probably have to put them down this time.”
“Them?” Danyael’s eyes narrowed in confusion, but the lieutenant tore away from Danyael’s grasp and ran out of the cafeteria without answering the question.
Danyael reached for his crutch and limped after the soldier. Reyes followed a step or two behind. The compound outside the cafeteria swarmed with controlled chaos as soldiers raced toward the training arena. Danyael’s key card did not permit him access to the arena, but the double doors were open, and he followed the soldiers in.
Terror, absolute and compelling, struck him first. Howls and screams ripped through the air permeated by the metallic scent of blood and the pungent smell of nitroglycerin. Several moments passed before Danyael’s overwhelmed senses dredged coherency out of the madness. A small group of disheveled men clad in tattered T-shirts and filthy pants ripped and tore their way through the soldiers of the Mutant Assault Group. One man leapt, pouncing like a predator, and dragged a soldier to the sand-covered ground of the arena. He slammed the soldier’s head into the ground until the soldier’s eyes rolled back in his head, and then he crowed loudly, a hooting sound that his companions echoed.
“What are they?” Reyes breathed. “They’re not even human.”
Their bulky shoulders were hunched, their ape-like gait agile, yet primeval. They wore expressions of animal cunning, but human intelligence did not glitter in their eyes.
More soldiers, Amanda among them, leapt over the rail and into the arena. They could not bring sup
erior technology or weapons to bear, not when their companions were locked in hand-to-hand combat against their enemies. Soldiers maneuvered around the bloodied battleground, seeking an opening but finding none. Danyael could taste their panic as screams of the injured and dying rent the air.
A creature swung a heavy arm into Amanda and sent her flying. An assault group soldier, a telekinetic, caught her in a psychic grip before she smashed into a wall. He broke her fall, saving her life. She tumbled gracelessly to the floor and came up from a roll with a gun in her hands. Her blue eyes were cool and focused as she fired two shots at a creature who was attacking another man. It howled with pain, ripping through the man before turning on Amanda.
She stood her ground, emptying her clip into the creature to hold its attention, as two other assault group soldiers dragged their injured companion away.
Danyael pushed toward her, panic clutching at him. He could not reach her in time.
The telekinetic intervened again, swooping her out of the way as the creature lunged. Its clawed hands clutched at air and then clenched. It spun around, howling its frustration. Its angry gaze locked on Amanda as the telekinetic settled her on a row of benches outside the arena, outside its reach.
A loud cry resounded through the arena. As if responding to an order, the creatures leapt over the high cement barriers that surrounded the sand-filled arena and into the rows of seats.
“Fall back,” Amanda shouted. “We can’t contain them. Seal the doors. Don’t let them get out!”
Eyes narrowed with animal cunning, the creatures searched for new targets and locked on the weak and wounded. Reyes! Danyael lunged and threw himself in front of a cowering Reyes just as a creature covered the large distance in a single pounce. The creature swung out, as did Danyael. Skin touched skin.
In that split second of contact, Danyael’s empathic powers flashed. The creature shrieked in pain, recoiling.
Enough! The alpha empath pushed to his feet and flicked his psychic shields aside. Fear roared out, not cold tendrils insidiously wrapping around will and fortitude, but an all-consuming blaze that sucked the air out of the large arena and drove everyone—human and monstrous creatures alike—to their knees, dizzy and breathless. Amanda shivered, her arms wrapped around herself, as she rocked back and forth, apparently oblivious to a clawed hand that trembled inches from her.
Silence reigned.
Danyael’s empathic powers soared, powerful and precise, its song compelling. Fear obediently returned at his call, like a pet returning to the hand of its master. Peace, like gently lapping waves, surged forth, filling in the void. The creatures straightened, as if a burden had been removed from their shoulders. As one, they turned and lumbered away, returning through the open door that led from the arena. Amanda scrambled to her feet and slammed her hand down on the control panel. The door slid shut.
Collectively the humans remaining in the arena sighed in relief.
The general’s voice cut through the silence, his calm voice restoring the illusion of order. “Tend to the wounded.”
Soldiers scrambled into action. Carson Smith scurried among the injured. Groans filled the hall as the soldiers prioritized their injured companions according to Carson’s instructions. The doctor looked up at the general, his lean face stricken, as the count of injured soldiers grew. “We have to get them to a hospital. Many of them are in critical condition. I can’t care for them here.”
“No hospitals,” the general said. “This disaster can’t be explained away as a training accident.” His face was impassive, but his eyes betrayed his anguish. “Save those you can, Carson. It’s all we can do.”
Danyael knew many of the soldiers who lay in long rows on the blood-soaked ground of the arena. He had spoken briefly to them when they passed him in the corridors. They were the men and women who had been invariably polite and professional to him during his past month at the Mutant Assault Group headquarters. They were Amanda’s teammates, the same men and women the general had said were sworn to protect Danyael with their lives, if necessary.
Danyael swallowed hard and braced himself. He stepped forward. “I’ll help.”
~*~
Danyael pulled his trembling hand away from the man’s forehead. The man’s abdomen was blood-streaked, but the vicious wound had closed, sealed by unblemished skin. “You’re going to be all right,” he told the wide-eyed soldier. Danyael wished he could say the same for himself. How many had he helped? He did not know. He had lost count after twelve. He brushed his thumbs over his fingertips. His extremities were cold, but he was far colder on the inside.
He inhaled deeply, braced himself, and then, holding on to the side of the bed, he tried to stand. His body, pushed past its limits, retaliated immediately. He gasped when his stomach pitched with nausea. His vision spun. Danyael closed his eyes in a futile attempt to steady himself, but he doubled over as fresh agony raked through him.
He barely felt the impact of crumpling to the ground. He could not feel anything over the screaming protest of his body as it struggled to contain the injuries he had absorbed. The metallic taste of blood mixed with sour bile in his mouth. Too much. I pushed too hard, too far.
Hands grasped his shoulders. He recoiled, struggling to restrain the panic as it surged against his psychic shields. No. Oh, God, no. He had screwed up; he could not afford to be weak or vulnerable, but in that moment, he was too tired, too sick to protect himself.
“It’s okay, Danyael. It’s just me.” Reyes’s strong, familiar voice calmed him. “You have to stop. You’ve done more than enough for the soldiers.”
“He’s right,” the general said. Another pair of strong arms slipped around his waist and raised him gently to his feet. “Damn, you are cold. Hansen, bring a heated blanket for Danyael.”
The general’s raised voice rang through Danyael’s skull. He winced and then shuddered when someone wrapped a blanket around his shoulders.
The general gave another order. “Clear that bed. He needs to lie down.”
Danyael could not lie down. He lurched away with desperation-fueled strength and stumbled into the bathroom. He dropped to his knees, scarcely noticing the piercing pain that shot through his left side. The bone-deep chill conceded to a soaring fever. Nausea ripped out the contents of his stomach. He heaved, vomiting into the toilet bowl until there was nothing left to bring up, and even then, he continued to dry heave, coughing up bile and blood.
When the nausea finally passed, he sank back, too exhausted to clean up after himself, yet aware enough to burn from the humiliation of knowing that others had witnessed the throes of his weakness. He curled into a fetal ball, as much to hide as to contain the pain. He turned his face toward the wall, but a gentle hand caught him by the chin, held his face steady, and wiped it clean with a cool cloth.
It was Reyes, he realized, when the man spoke. “I think the worst is past. Let’s move him to the bed.”
Several pairs of strong hands lifted him carefully and laid him on a clean bed before drawing warm blankets around his shoulders. Reyes brushed sweat-soaked locks from Danyael’s fevered brow. Danyael recognized the firm, kind touch. Dimly he realized that Reyes had braced him, one hand against his forehead and the other wrapped around his chest, when he retched into the toilet bowl.
“Thank you.” Danyael’s lips shaped the words, but no sound emerged.
He sensed rather than saw Reyes smile. The warmth of Reyes’s unconditional acceptance of him, all his strengths and all his weaknesses, was like a lifesaver tossed to a drowning, dying man. With relief and gratitude, Danyael closed his eyes and allowed Reyes’s touch to calm him, luring him into the darkness of rest.
CHAPTER NINE
Danyael’s mind drifted, lost in a gray haze between waking and sleeping. Too tense to rest fully, yet too exhausted to wake, Danyael found it easier to give in to the needs of a body that seemed to take longer to recover each time he pushed it past exhaustion.
I’m getting older, he thoug
ht ruefully.
A female voice whispered through his mind. We all are.
In his sleep, he smiled. I missed you.
The voice was briefly silent. I wasn’t sure you even realized I was there, she said finally.
You were at ADX with me. I remember your voice in my head telling me to hang in there, not to give up. You were the last voice I heard before losing consciousness, the first I heard upon regaining awareness. Where have you been?
You’re okay, now. I didn’t think you’d need me anymore.
Danyael hesitated briefly before asking, It’s you, Miriya, isn’t it?
Several moments passed in silence before she answered. Yes.
Danyael inhaled deeply. Thank you.
That was not what I expected you to say. I thought you’d be mad that I’m still hooked in to your mind after all this time.
You gave me strength. You kept me sane.
Are you okay? I felt—
Danyael tensed. You can feel what I’m feeling? I didn’t realize that anything but location conveyed through a psychic hook.
I’ve since learned the standard rules rarely apply to you, Miriya replied dryly.
Guilt, a dull heartache, seized him. I’m sorry.
What happened to you at ADX was not your fault. Besides, Miriya continued, I could have dropped the hook any time I wanted. I chose to hold on to it.
Danyael chuckled in his dreams, a low, sad sound. I’ve been called stubborn, but it appears that you are too.
It takes a stubborn fool to recognize another.
Amusement laced Miriya’s voice now, an improvement, he supposed, from the wariness that had infused it before.
She asked again, Are you okay?
Yes, I think so. Just tired. You know where I am, don’t you?
