XGeneration (Book 6): Greatest Good

by Brad Magnarella

  “I’ve never heard of anything like this,” she remarked.

  “Neither has anyone in the Program. Brain scans around the implant are showing areas of abnormally subdued activity. Like parts of his brain have been turned off. I had Scott take a look. Using his abilities, he was able to access the device’s inner workings. He says it’s using Jesse’s own brain power to conduct low-level signals that are, in turn, inhibiting neuronal activity in other parts of his brain.”

  “Can it be removed?”

  Kilmer shook his head. “That was something else Scott found. The implant is programmed so that if the leads begin to disengage, the power loss will be detected. At a certain threshold, all remaining power will discharge into Jesse’s brain stem, killing him instantly.”

  “Perhaps Janis can perform a read.”

  “I already had her try.” Kilmer read Steel’s displeasure at being left out of the loop in the tightening of her scarred lips. He guessed they would be having that discussion soon. “The areas of the brain that manifest thoughts and store memories are the very ones the implant is inhibiting. Janis says it’s like trying to tap into dead space. There’s just nothing there.”

  “Maybe that’s the point. Not only to hide what he knows about the Scale but to cover up his reason for coming back. The Scale wouldn’t have just released him. Not without a plan.”

  Kilmer nodded gravely, his eyes shifting back to Jesse. He and Agent Steel had already run through the possible explanations for his return. Escape was last on that list. Unfortunately, no one had seen Jesse dropped off. The first alert of his return came by way of the security cameras mounted at the front of the neighborhood, which Jesse had approached on foot. Attempts to detain him had had violent results, only to find that Jesse’s objective was his bedroom.

  Kilmer’s gaze fell back to the x-ray.

  “Here’s my thinking,” he said. “Let’s say he defected, but when he learned how the Scale operated, what their plans were for him, it ran up against his sense of fairness. He felt like he’d been conned. The implant might first have been used to influence his will. When you land a prize like Jesse, you do everything you can to keep him. I know we did. But when that failed, the Scale resorted to shutting down parts of his brain, rendering him inoperable. They dumped him back on our doorstep, figuring he could be our problem.”

  “Why not just kill him?”

  The question led down the darker of the two alleys in Kilmer’s mind. He wasn’t ready to go down it just yet. “There are theories of warfare that propose it’s better to maim your enemies than to kill them. And that’s not for humanitarian reasons. The thinking goes that maiming diverts your enemies’ resources from warfare into caring for the injured.” He nodded toward Jesse’s intensive care setup. “Perhaps that was the Scale’s thinking as well.”

  Steel didn’t appear swayed. Her cold gaze roamed the bullet-proof window and the cutaway of the wall: four-foot-thick cast concrete with double rebar. “What I want to know is what happens when he wakes up.”

  “If he turns violent, the room will hold him long enough to pump in the isoflurane. He’ll fall right back to sleep.”

  “We hit him with iso- the other day, and he held his breath while still managing to batter half my team and wreck a neighborhood block. You may be underestimating him, sir.”

  Her boldness sent a jolt through Kilmer’s temples.

  “Has it occurred to you,” she went on, “that the implant is covering up a plan? One that would have Jesse attack the Program from the inside while the rest of the Scale close in from the outside.”

  That was the darker alley in Kilmer’s mind. Not that Jesse had been implanted for resisting the Scale but for agreeing to a plan much like his head of security was outlining. It was very possible that Jesse, the Champion’s most destructive member, had volunteered himself for the operation. Kilmer leaned over the metal desktop on his fists. And this coming on top of his own inability to locate the Scale or do anything about the cancerous element of the Champions’ mutations. Kilmer felt his impotence turn to anger and boil over.

  “Has it occurred to you that we have a group of super-powered teens?” he countered. “Ones you’re supposed to be preparing for just these kinds of threats?”

  “And where were they the other day?” Her frosted blue eyes drilled into his.

  “We addressed that.”

  “Creed used his abilities to leave the neighborhood and attend his girlfriend’s rally.” Steel ticked off her pinky finger. “Margaret was in the neighborhood but claimed she never received the alert. Equipment malfunction.” She ticked off her ring finger, then held up her first two digits and raised her thin eyebrows. “I still haven’t received a clear account of Scott’s and Janis’s whereabouts or, for that matter, how they came into possession of a car. And no punishment?”

  Kilmer turned back to the window. “It’s being handled.”

  “With all due respect, sir, those kids do not drive in and out of the neighborhood without someone on my team allowing it. Which can only mean you’re giving orders without my knowledge.” The space they shared seemed to turn as cold as her tone. “That upsets me.”

  Kilmer felt the muscles in his neck bunch up. “If I’m coordinating with members of your team, there’s a good reason for it. Since when does that require your approval? I’m the director. I vetted and hired you.” He spoke with his back to her, fighting to maintain a professional tone even as he flung out an arm. “I developed this whole Program, for God’s sake.”

  “And you also created a kill switch for your position.”

  “What?”

  “‘Failure to execute the office of director with reasonable skill and safety and in strict deference to presidential orders will result in immediate expulsion from the position and Program,’” Steel recited.

  Kilmer turned slowly until he was facing her.

  “The second you learned of the attacks on the other Programs, you were to have evacuated the Champions to our designated bunker. Instead, you held them here. Not only that, you’ve been sending two out of the neighborhood without my knowledge, exposing them and the rest of the team to danger. When a threat manifested, they were too far out of position to respond. Jesse’s return could have been far more disastrous than it was.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “I’m carrying out orders, sir. Your orders. It was what you hired me for.”

  Kilmer stared at her, feeling like he had been shot through the gut. Mostly because everything Agent Steel was saying was right. He had drawn up the rules to prevent questionable decision-making on the part of the director—the Program’s most powerful position—from undermining security. It would only take one maverick director to cut the Program off at the knees, he had reasoned. Of course, he’d never counted on the Scale finding them first.

  “You’ve communicated with President Reagan, then?” he asked numbly.

  “No, sir. Not yet. I’ve deferred to your judgment to this point. I would be remiss in my duties, however, if I continued to do so. You have twenty-four hours to coordinate our evacuation. Failure to comply will leave me no choice but to inform him. Again, per your own orders.”

  Kilmer exhaled heavily.

  “Are we clear, sir?” she asked.

  He hesitated before giving a slight nod.

  She didn’t wait for him to dismiss her before departing the observation room. Kilmer turned and stared vacantly through the window. In the room beyond, Jesse’s throat caught mid-snore. His huge belly quaked, and for a moment Kilmer thought he was about to sit up.

  He backed away from the glass.

  A moment later, the obstruction in Jesse’s airway cleared, and he resumed his deep Scale-induced sleep.

  Twenty-four hours.

  He twisted his watch around on his wrist and punched in an order for Steel’s second in command to bring Scott and Janis back and get rid of the car. His finger hovered over the send button. With a sigh, he pressed cancel an
d pulled his jacket sleeve back over the watch face.

  17

  Janis looked nervously from the swerving road to Scott. He was working the steering wheel with one hand and pawing through the crumpled printouts on the dashboard with the other. When the station wagon’s tires bumped over the center line, Janis sighed and swept the pages up.

  “You drive, I’ll navigate,” she said.

  She turned the printouts around and got her bearings. Scott had mumbled something about hacking a NASA database the night before and finding high-detailed satellite images of north central Florida which he’d downloaded and printed out. With a red grease pencil, he had circled two towers—one radio, one television—northwest of Gainesville and marked the route to each.

  The radio tower hadn’t borne fruit, so it was onto the second.

  Janis peeked over at the plastic speedometer and found it jiggling just shy of eighty. The certainty that the same person who had rigged up the transceivers and repeater had also played brain surgeon on Jesse was like caffeine in their blood.

  “We’re going to continue straight for a while,” she said. “Next turn will be on the right.”

  Scott nodded, gripping the steering wheel with both hands now. “Have you had any more premonitions lately? A sense that anything is changing?”

  She knew what he was asking: whether their actions had begun to alter the future she had glimpsed. She shook her head. “No premonitions since seeing Tyler leaving Kilmer’s office that morning. But that doesn’t mean anything’s changed. Something’s still gnawing at my gut.”

  “Well one thing’s for certain,” Scott said. “We’re going to nail this guy today and he doesn’t even know it.”

  Janis was about to remind him of Kilmer’s warning they not engage the Scale, but after what the tech-head had done to their teammate, she was primed to teach him a painful lesson as well.

  No one screwed with the Champions.

  At that moment, a cold sensation prickled over her. Not a premonition, but a sense of being watched, like she had experienced outside the warehouse. Her teeth chattered as the sensation passed.

  Scott looked over. “You all right?”

  “What if he planned for us to come find him?”

  “What?”

  “This guy. His first words to you were ‘You’ll never find me,’ right? When kids want to be chased, what do they say? ‘Can’t catch me.’ Think about it. He knew you’d tinker with the transceiver. He knew you’d go looking for a repeater. He knew the search would lead you here.” She rattled the printout with the television tower. “That’s the only reason he kept his transceiver on.”

  “What are you saying? That he outsmarted me?”

  “I’m not trying to insult you, Scott. I’m just saying that in our anxiousness to locate the Scale, we might have overlooked the obvious.”

  Scott said nothing. He appeared to be moving the idea around in his head.

  “Kilmer called them assassins,” she went on. “He said they would wait until we were at our most vulnerable to strike. Well, doesn’t drawing us into the middle of nowhere fit that M.O.?”

  “But if we know that’s what they’re doing, doesn’t that give us the advantage?”

  “I don’t know, Scott. They’ve had a lot of practice at this sort of thing. We haven’t.”

  He stared resolutely ahead. “We don’t have a choice.”

  “What do you mean? Of course we do.”

  “If we back off now, we won’t have changed anything. The future we’ve been trying to alter will remain as is.” He looked over at her. “Which means one of us is still going to get it.”

  “Then let’s kick it back to Kilmer and Steel,” Janis said. “See how they want to handle it.”

  “And if they want to handle it by hiding us away? We’re back to square one.”

  Janis squinted out her window at the flurry of trees and sky. Scott was right. Either they altered the future by putting themselves at risk, or they waited helplessly for the inevitable.

  “How about this?” Scott said. “We go to the tower and grab the direction to the transceiver. That should be safe enough. The tower’s out in the open. If the Scale are planning anything, it will be wherever that transceiver is. Once we have a location, we’ll decide what to do next.”

  A cold foreboding moved through Janis.

  “One step at a time,” he said, placing a reassuring hand on her knee.

  She felt herself nod.

  Reginald sat at his kitchen table and forced another spoonful of tomato soup down. He waited to make sure his stomach wouldn’t reject it before spooning and swallowing some more. The Witch had said a week, and he was two days shy of that. He had awoken that morning without an appetite, his legs trembling when he stood. He felt a little better now, but the writing was on the wall. The Vitrin was leaving his system.

  He set the spoon aside and took the bowl in both hands, grimacing with each swallow.

  Need to maintain my strength for as long as possible.

  Especially since he hadn’t made contact. He placed the bowl down and wiped his mouth. Hands in his lap, he bowed and focused into the space he and Madelyn had once shared. Empty, save for the bundled thought form he had placed there: his message to Janis.

  Dammit.

  Either Janis had found Madelyn’s necklace and not known what to make of it, or she had never found it. Rationally, Reginald knew it was going to be a long shot, but either from intuition or desperation, a part of him had been convinced it would work. Now there was only one route left to him.

  In the living room, he tipped the plaid loveseat forward until it was supported by its armrests. Tacks held a muslin liner to the underside. The liner fell open as he began pulling the tacks out, revealing three sections of rifle. He removed them from the bowels of the couch and set them on the carpet beside him.

  As he assembled the rifle, he was reminded of a day more than twenty-five years earlier when he had prepared for a trip to the White House. Then, he was dead set on assassinating a man whom he had believed responsible for his wife’s, his unborn son’s, and his fellow Champions’ murders. This time, he would be taking aim at an innocent child, one he’d sworn to protect.

  Soup burned up his throat. He pressed the back of a hand to his lips until his stomach settled again.

  The damn thing of it was he’d had a plan. A good one. The Champions would have been spared, the Scale drawn into the full light, including the Witch. With the Champions’ help, they would have learned the identity of the person or organization behind the Scale’s operation, one that locked the U.S. and Soviet Union into a teetering arms race.

  Reginald shook his head as he attached the rifle scope.

  The Witch knew what she was doing. With the blood of one of those kids on his hands, he would get his Vitrin but lose any and all chance of aligning with the Champions. Subsequent attempts to warn them would get him captured or killed—if not by the Champions, then the Scale.

  He raised the heavy rifle to his cheek and squinted at the far wall through the scope.

  Given the stakes, it was a chance he would have to take.

  Janis felt the first stabs of a headache as she watched Scott begin his descent from the tower. For the last half hour, she had been blurring the space around him, making him hard to see. Not only that, she had encased him in a protective shield and was expending a good deal of energy to make sure it could block a high-velocity projectile—bullets especially. And then there was her vigilance of the immediate area. That took energy, too. She could sense Dutch’s team staked out around the tower at strategic positions. Though she sensed no one else, the prickling residue from being watched earlier remained with her, challenging her focus.

  At last, Scott dropped from the bottom of the ladder, scaled the security fence, and jogged up to where she stood beside the station wagon. He removed his helmet. As he finger-combed his hair to one side, Janis could see the shine of excitement behind his crooked glasses.
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br />   “Sorry it took so long,” he said, breathing hard. “He had that repeater hidden pretty well. Hard to access.”

  Janis picked up a final thought that he didn’t speak and hadn’t intended for her to overhear: Makes me think he didn’t plan on anyone finding him. It seemed a dangerous leap to Janis, but she only nodded.

  “I’m just glad you’re back safe.”

  “Thanks for the cover.”

  “Any time.”

  As they turned toward the station wagon, Janis maintained their shields but relaxed the blurring effect around Scott. The throbs in her head receded, and she felt her reservoir of energy refilling.

  “All right,” Scott said, holding up the Walkman. “Step two.”

  He dug a folded-up piece of paper from his pocket and opened it over the hood of the station wagon. Janis read the messages and their Morse translations as Scott placed the orange headphones over his ears and switched the Walkman’s mode to FM. He tapped out a sending-transmission message and then paused, his eyes searching the cold, washed-out sky as he listened for a response. He nodded earnestly at Janis to tell her it had come.

  He tapped his first message:

  CAN’T BELIEVE THIS PIECE OF CRAP STILL WORKS.

  He jotted down the Morse response and translated it:

  BELIEVE IT, MAGGOT.

  Scott’s turn: ANYWAY, I FOUND YOU.

  OH, REALLY?

  MICANOPY.

  Micanopy was a town just south of Gainesville, a good eighty miles from where Janis and Scott presently stood. The guess had been Scott’s idea to make it appear that he was way off his counterpart’s scent as well as to gauge his response. That response wasn’t long in coming.

  HA. HA. WRONG, DIPSHIT.

  GIVE ME A HINT?

  HERE’S A HINT: YOU SUCK.

  Scott tapped out a final response before cutting off the Walkman.

  BITE ME.

  He pulled the headphones from his ears and held the written exchange out for Janis to read over. “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but it looks like he has no idea how close we are.”