by S. A. Beck
But what to do? Revealing her powers would be dangerous. Those guys who had tried to abduct her back at the group home had obviously come after her because they knew about her special abilities. There was no other explanation. They had come for her, not Otto, and if they had wanted to abduct any ordinary girl, they could have done it more easily by prowling the backstreets and looking for someone walking alone. The whole thing looked like a planned operation.
How can you be yourself when being yourself is dangerous?
Jaxon got out of bed, her mind racing. Sleep wouldn’t come for hours. She tiptoed to her door and listened. The house was quiet, the Grants having gone to bed early again. She moved to her dresser, put on a pair of jeans and a shirt, plus a hooded sweatshirt, and went to her window.
She opened it and looked out over the twinkling carpet of lights that was Los Angeles. The lawn lay far below. Even though she was only on the second floor, the mansion had soaring ceilings that made it seem as if she was on the fourth floor.
So what? She’d punched through a wooden floor with her fingertip.
She put a leg out the window, then swung the other out until she was sitting on the ledge.
Don’t think. Just do.
She took a deep breath and jumped. She landed with a soft thud on the grass below. Her legs barely flexed, and she didn’t feel any pain. She took a couple of experimental steps and found that she hadn’t sprained or strained anything.
Let’s see a normal person do that, she thought. Good thing I’m not suicidal. I’d never be able to manage it!
With a chuckle, Jaxon sprinted across the lawn, leaped the wrought-iron fence on instinct, and soared a full ten feet in the air. She landed on the other side, as if she had been jumping over a soda can on the sidewalk, and ran into the night.
“Time to get useful,” she said as the cool night air enveloped her, and the lights of Los Angeles spread before her. It would all be hers.
Chapter 5
JUNE 18, 2016, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO
1:15 PM
General Meade was beginning to think he was the only competent person in the entire United States government. His agents had utterly failed to stop the group led by Dr. Yuhle, the former Poseidon Project employee, from taking away Dr. Yamazaki. Yuhle or someone with him had found the tracking device, destroyed it, and fought off his agents. So not only had he lost the one person who was the leading expert on the Atlantis gene, but also from all reports it appeared she had recovered from that stroke he’d given her.
How? It must have been that band of Atlanteans who had sprung her out of the hospital. Yuhle couldn’t have cured her. He was a decent scientist, but no one knew how to heal a brain ravaged by stroke. It could only have been a special power by one of those Atlanteans.
General Meade rubbed his jaw and stared at the wall of his office, past the photos of himself as a younger man in various theaters of war or the one showing him receiving a medal from the previous president. Instead, he looked off into his own imagination, wondering about the two groups fighting against him.
The Atlanteans, for all their special abilities, had acted like amateurs. Even his blundering goon squad had managed to kill them, except for one they’d wounded and captured. He’d have to pry some information out of him about how many were in his group and what they were planning to do next. They surely hadn’t sent their entire force against him the other day. There would be more, and they would be less confident and more cautious next time. That would make them harder to beat.
The other group, the one Dr. Yuhle had started, was proving tougher. They seemed to anticipate his every move. They must have had a star hacker on their side. At least a couple of good mercenaries, too, with an almost unlimited supply of weaponry. His agents had told them that in the car chase, they’d been fired at with a machine gun and had three different types of grenades thrown at them.
Strange. While the country had no shortage of mercenaries with access to illegal arms, Yuhle didn’t have the money to hire them. As soon as Yuhle had gone into hiding, General Meade checked the scientist’s bank account records. Yuhle had made a full withdrawal, not surprisingly, but the account hadn’t had very much in it in the first place. An extensive trace turned up no other bank accounts for Yuhle in the United States or overseas. Yuhle didn’t have enough money to stay on the run for more than a couple of months, and yet he had hired a crack team. Good mercenaries didn’t come cheap.
Which could mean only two things—either he was getting financial backing from someone, or the members of his team were volunteers. The second possibility was the more disturbing one. Volunteers meant they couldn’t be turned or bribed. It also meant they were probably out for him personally.
Assuming that, who would be out to get him? He’d made plenty of enemies in his career, but most were dead, in jail, or living overseas. That left a pretty short list, and some of those would stop short of taking on the US government. They had to be people with nothing to lose who had something against him or some strong motivation to help a people whom most of the world thought were simply a legend.
The general banged his fist on the desk. He was getting nowhere. He needed to find out more. He got up, went out of his office, and headed for the Poseidon Project laboratory.
He locked the office door behind him. As he passed through the front room, his assistant, Major Leticia Jefferson, stopped him. Half black and half Hispanic, Major Jefferson had gotten herself out of a terrible part of Spanish Harlem by volunteering for the army and earning a series of medals in war zones. She deserved a medal for all the indispensable help she’d been giving him on that project, but people didn’t get medals for projects that didn’t officially exist. It was one of the many unfair aspects of military life.
“I’ve printed out a few of the latest semi-declassified reports, sir,” Major Jefferson said, handing over a manila envelope.
General Meade nodded in appreciation. The Pentagon was digitizing old reports from its archives. Many were still top secret but had become more accessible to him because they were on the army server. It saved him a trip through the vast military archives up in Washington, DC.
“What are they, Major?” he asked.
“What looks like an important report on the Roswell incident and a couple of brief reports on other sightings from the forties.”
“Thank you, Major. Keep them until I return. By the way, please check on the location of every member of my blacklist. Check their recent movements for the past two months.”
The blacklist had the names and details of Meade’s enemies in the United States. If anyone could spot who might be helping Yuhle in his treachery, Major Jefferson could. She had a keen mind.
“Yes, sir.”
General Meade turned and walked down the hallway then swiped his card through two different security doors to get to the laboratory of the Poseidon Project.
He entered a large room full of scientific equipment. Along one wall stood several man-sized cylindrical containers, looking a bit like upright coffins. A Plexiglas window on each of them showed the serene faces of several Atlanteans, held in a state of suspended animation until they were ready to be used. They reminded him of a rack of assault rifles, perfectly safe as long as they weren’t touched, and deadly if they were taken down and put to use.
At least that was what he hoped they would be. Only one had been brought out of his unnatural slumber and put into the training program.
General Meade looked around the laboratory. No one else was there. Good. That meant Dr. Patrick Jones, his lead scientist, was actually working and not sneaking a look at Facebook. If Jones had had the work ethic of Dr. Yamazaki, the project would be ahead of schedule instead of barely keeping up.
He passed by a table filled with chemistry equipment, took a right around an electron microscope, and came to another door. Once again, he had to swipe his ID card through two sets of doors, his image being monitored by a series of cameras, before he emerged on a back
lot.
The area was a few acres, surrounded by a sheer concrete wall thirty feet high and topped with razor wire. At each of the four corners, security cameras faced outward to search for intruders.
No camera faced inward. Even the security staff at the base weren’t authorized to know what went on in that lot.
The area was broken up into several different types of terrain. From where General Meade stood, the ground went from flat gravel to a series of steep little hills. Out of sight to the right, he knew since he had designed the layout himself, stood a couple of small concrete buildings and some heaps of rubble. To his left, he could see the canopy of a lush bit of greenery planted to replicate jungle conditions.
It was a training ground to teach his Atlantean subject, Orion, how to fight in various environments. General Meade had modeled it on the training grounds he remembered as a cadet, with a few additions of his own. Beneath his feet ran a series of tunnels that were modeled after the sewers and steam tunnels that ran unseen, and mostly unknown, beneath all American towns and cities. Orion would get the best training General Meade could offer him in such a limited space.
Dr. Jones stood not far off, studying a tablet that showed all of Orion’s vital signs. The scientist had put various monitors on the Atlantean and was studying how he reacted to stress and exertion.
General Meade was about to speak to the scientist when the crack of a rifle shot made him hurry forward. He didn’t want to miss anything.
He scrambled over the series of steep, artificial hills, smiling as he noticed that despite being well into middle age, he could get up and down them without losing breath. He came to the summit of the last hillock, and from there, the general could see a series of low concrete buildings, typical of those in cities of the Middle East. A few large heaps of rubble lay here and there to add extra complexity to the terrain and to imitate the actual conditions of a heavily bombed city.
General Meade had fought in that sort of environment too many times. The High Command felt that the best way to pacify a city was to bomb it for weeks on end and then send in ground forces. What they didn’t seem to understand was that if forces pounded on someone’s neighborhood and killed a bunch of his friends and family without him having a chance to fight back, and then suddenly appeared on his street, he was not exactly going to come out of his bomb shelter with a smile on his face and an American flag in his hand. He would be looking for payback.
Unconsciously, the general rubbed and flexed his left shoulder, which was still a bit stiff and sore from an old wound. He’d gotten a little payback himself in a place that looked much like that.
The rifle cracked again. Instinctively, General Meade ducked, even though he knew the shooter was firing only paint pellets. He located the shooter in a second, nestled in the shadow of a satellite dish on the rooftop. More men would be hidden inside the building.
General Meade scanned the area. The two best approaches to the building were the heap of rubble between him and it, and the drainage ditch flanked by shrubbery off to the left.
A flicker of movement in the ditch told him that Orion had taken the second option.
The sniper saw the movement too, and two shots kicked up dirt on either side of the ditch, leaving splotches of red paint on the ground.
Orion burst out of the ditch and, with incredible speed, sprinted for the heap of rubble. He moved so quickly that the sniper didn’t have a chance to get a shot off until Orion was more than halfway to cover. Three shots plowed up the earth behind him as Orion ducked into a roll and went behind the nearest heap of broken concrete and rusted rebars. Orion was out of sight of the building and its occupants, while General Meade could still get a good look at him.
What a magnificent specimen! Orion could run faster than a gazelle and was stronger than a bear. He was getting clever too. Showing himself in that ditch had been a trick. He knew the sniper would be too slow to hit him before he ducked back down, and he made the sniper waste two rounds before Orion truly showed himself. That was why the guy didn’t get off any more shots until Orion had almost gotten out of sight again.
Orion crouched behind the broken pile of concrete, planning his next move. The next obvious step was to dive to the right to a bigger pile of rubble slightly closer to the building. Of course the sniper would have the crosshairs of his rifle trained on the narrow gap between the two heaps of concrete, and even with Orion’s speed, it would be tough to make it in time.
Orion sensed that too. He picked up a chunk of concrete the size of a dinner plate and, without showing himself to the shooters in the building, heaved it overhead. With uncanny accuracy, the piece of concrete sailed in a perfect arc to land on top of the roof. A cry from the rooftop told General Meade that Orion had made a hit.
General Meade rubbed his jaw. He hoped that man wasn’t too badly injured. Orion got carried away sometimes, and one of the general’s latest headaches was explaining to the Pentagon why soldiers under his command kept going to the hospital.
Orion was already on the move. He shot like a bullet to the next heap of rubble then disappeared around it to another bit of cover the general remembered was there. Eager to see the show, General Meade ran down to the rubble.
I wonder if I’ll attract fire myself, he thought. The men might want a bit of revenge for the tough training I’m putting them through.
Just to be on the safe side, General Meade crouched low as he ran in a zigzag pattern. He followed Orion’s lead, making the same moves he had in the approach to the enemy position. His body warmed up, and all the old wartime reflexes came back.
Feels good, he thought. I’ve been behind my desk and in budget meetings for too long.
A couple of more shots told him where Orion had disappeared. He had cut around to the side of the building and was trying to get inside.
General Meade sprinted between two piles of rubble. The ground behind him plumed up with a shot. He grinned. So, the boys were out to harass their commander, eh? He’d show them who was boss.
He hunkered behind the shelter of the concrete for a moment. Best be careful. Paint pellets wouldn’t kill him, but they sure did hurt, and the paint took ages to get out of a uniform.
Another burst of fire from his forward right reminded him that he was missing the show. He zigzagged through the rubble and flattened himself against the wall of the nearest building. None of them could hit him unless they exposed themselves out a window, something every soldier was trained not to do.
A thud on the ground next to him made him look. He had just enough time to whip around the corner before the paint grenade went off, spraying the whole area with red dye. Not a drop hit him.
An open window pierced the wall just a few feet ahead. He heard a series of blows and the sound of falling bodies.
He took a quick peek through the window to check that there was no threat and then took a longer look. Three of his soldiers lay in a heap on the ground, and Orion was disappearing up a set of nearby stairs.
General Meade pulled himself through the window. He’d really have to talk to Orion about being gentler with the men. Gentleness didn’t come naturally to him, though, and the whole point of the exercise was to turn him into a killing machine.
As the general passed by the groaning soldiers, he scooped up a gun, checked each way around the doorway, and headed up the stairs.
Silence.
He peered around the corner just in time to see Orion sneak into a room at the end of the hall. He moved as quietly as a cat, with a cat’s natural grace and balance. The physical tests Dr. Jones had put him through had ranked him off the charts.
Between General Meade and Orion’s position stood another doorway. A soldier snuck out of it, gun at the ready, following Orion.
General Meade shot him straight in the butt.
The soldier leaped and turned around, rubbing his rear end. He gave the general a confused look.
“You have to check both ways before coming into a hallway, soldier
,” General Meade said. “Every time.”
The soldier’s face fell with embarrassment. “Yes, sir.”
Orion peeked out of the next room. “I was going to ambush him, sir.”
General Meade chuckled and turned back to the soldier. “Looks like you got off easy then, private. He would have given you a harder lesson than I just did.”
The soldier limped off, red paint dribbling down the back of his pants.
“Be careful, sir,” Orion said. “This building isn’t clear. I’m talking in order to make it more challenging. Now they know where I am.”
General Meade nodded and ducked into the room where the soldier had been hiding. He heard a rush of air, and the next time he looked, Orion had disappeared.
A few seconds later, there was a brief cry. One more down.
General Meade snuck out again. No point in sitting around and missing all the fun.
He doubled back the way he had come, his rifle leveled, passing the stairwell and checking that the room beyond it was clear. Orion had gone the other way, so now he and his protégé were coming on the soldiers from both sides.
Just as the general was crossing the room, a soldier popped out from around the opposite doorway. The soldier and he fired simultaneously. General Meade heard the paint pellet whip close by his head while his own pellet splattered harmlessly on the doorframe.
General Meade scampered to the far wall, pressed himself close, and aimed for the doorway. The soldier would have to lean out in order to get a shot at him, unless he had…
A grenade rolled into the room. Firing at the doorway to cover his movement, the general leaped for the grenade and kicked it back through the doorway.
Then came a loud bang and an even louder curse. The soldier walked through the door, looking glum and dripping red paint from head to toe.
“You have to wait before you throw a grenade, private,” General Meade told him. “I know it’s the most unnatural thing in the world to hold a ticking bomb in your hand, but if you don’t want it kicked back in your face, you need to learn to do that.”
