Langer looked up from his computer screen. “Okay. I think we’re ready. Let’s raise the bar now. I want you to hit the shield again, this time at plus gravity.”
Jeremy took a deep breath.
His dad said that his power would be there when he needed it. Maybe it would, but that answer wasn’t good enough—not anymore. Jeremy could ignore his ability and let it go to waste, or he could start to work—turn himself into something more. That choice was easy.
Jeremy squared his shoulders and took another breath. Then he threw a heavy right cross into the center of the bag.
As soon as it landed, Langer clapped his hands. “Yes!”
Jeremy looked over. “What? What was it?”
Langer turned the screen so Jeremy could see for himself. “That last punch came in at a plus eight, G. It basically means you turned your fist into a block of steel, which is awesome!”
The scientist turned the screen back and typed at the keyboard. “Let’s do it again. Time to go to work, G. I want you to hit the bag again, and try to keep your gravity at plus eight.”
Jeremy snapped another right cross into the bag.
“Just missed that time with a plus ten. Go again. Try to keep your gravity at plus eight,” Langer said.
Jeremy punched again.
Langer clapped his hands. “There it is! Plus eight, right on the money. Do that again, G. Keep it right there.”
Jeremy threw another right cross into the bag.
“Miss. That one was plus nine. Try it again.”
Jeremy punched again.
Chapter 19
Jeremy’s shirt was soaked through with sweat, and his hair was dripping. He sat in a chair at the side of the room, his head hanging down almost to his chest, and he wiped a small towel back and forth across his neck.
He had been training for the better part of two hours, throwing punch after punch into the bag at the center of the room. Langer would read off the gravity number from his computer, and then Jeremy would punch again. And again. And again.
He looked down at his right hand. From the knuckles back to his wrist, his hand was wrapped in white gauze and tape. Fifteen minutes into training he had opened a small cut on the top of his middle finger, and now he could see where the outside of the gauze was stained pink. He would need to wrap it again after the break.
For a while he was counting every punch. Then, when he cut his hand, he lost track. After that he only cared about the plus eights. His record was sixteen in a row. On the seventeenth punch he just missed with a plus seven. Still, it was a miss. His highest score was a plus thirteen. That one felt really good.
Jeremy sat up in his chair, leaning the back of his head against the wall.
“Hey, how you feeling, champ?” Langer looked over from his computer.
Jeremy forced a smile. “I feel like a plus eight.”
“Yeah? You’re looking like a plus eight. It’s almost like you’re a different person up there. Not bad for your second day. How are you doing physically? Any nausea yet? Dizziness?”
“No, none of that.” Jeremy looked over at Langer. “Why not?”
Every other time he had used his powers, Jeremy felt like he was close to blacking out, or worse, he would actually lose consciousness. But today he was fine. He probably wouldn’t have even thought about it if Langer hadn’t brought it up.
“Yeah! You see that? We’re already getting you all figured out,” Langer said. “We looked at the data from the other night, when you punched your way through the door. Turns out there’s a simple reason for a simple problem. You keep blacking out because you aren’t getting any air.”
Jeremy’s face twisted.
Langer said, “Your lungs are like a balloon, right? You breathe in and the balloon expands. You breathe out and it shrinks again.”
Jeremy nodded. That much he understood.
“But when you increase your gravitational field, your lungs can’t expand. There’s too much pressure on the outside. It’s like… It’s like you stuck the balloon in a bottle. There’s nowhere for it to go. It can’t expand, so it can’t fill up. That’s why if you gravity up for too long, you suffer from oxygen deprivation. Then you’re done—you blackout—but not today. Why not? Because today I have you working in waves. First we jack your gravity up and you hit the bag. Then we drop your gravity back down and you take a breath. See how that works?”
It was a lot to follow, but Jeremy could understand the gist. “Waves are good. Constant means I’m dead.”
Langer turned back to his laptop. “That’s about right. So, what do you say? Ready to try it again?”
Jeremy stood up. “Yeah. I need to re-wrap my—”
Suddenly, red flashing lights filled the room, and a loud siren sounded over the speakers. Jeremy and Langer both froze in place, looking up at the lights.
Then the siren stopped, and a quick voice came over the speaker. “Base security is now set to level orange. I repeat, base security is now set to level orange. All personnel should report to designated areas. I repeat, base security is now set to level orange.”
Jeremy yelled over the speakers, “What does that mean? Is this a drill?”
Langer yelled back, “We don’t have drills.”
A nauseous panic settled at the bottom of Jeremy’s gut. He looked back at Langer. The scientist slammed shut his laptop, pulled the wires out of the back, and picked it up to his chest, as if it were some kind of shield. Jeremy could tell the man was just as panicked as he was, and that only made things worse.
Jeremy yelled again, “Where’s my designated area?”
Langer was already moving for the door. “I don’t know. Downstairs, maybe.”
The door opened, and Langer stepped out. Jeremy followed. In the hallway, a dozen men and women wearing white lab coats were quickly walking to their right, streaming out of open doors. Langer fell into line with these others and hurried off.
Jeremy looked to his left. He could see the back of Gauntlet’s armored head bobbing above the crowd, pushing ahead in the opposite direction. Jeremy stepped into the hallway; he shouldered his way past another scientist to reach the far wall, and then he hurried after Gauntlet. He reached the elevator just as Gauntlet was stepping inside. Nyx and Talon were already waiting. Jeremy stepped in, and Nyx pressed the button. The doors closed, and the elevator started to drop.
Jeremy tried to slow his breathing—to stop himself from shaking—but it was no use. There was too much adrenaline already in his system. He would have to wait it out. At least it was quiet in the elevator. No flashing lights or sirens or voices. Just the dull whoosh of descent.
Jeremy looked at the others. Were they all feeling the same thing—that heady cocktail of excitement, confusion, and the stale taste of vomit sitting at the back of their throats? If they were, none of them showed it.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened. They stepped out into the Rec Room. Just like in the elevator, it was quiet down here—calm.
Jeremy spoke first. “What are we supposed to do now?”
“Do whatever you want,” Nyx answered, walking in the direction of her room.
Jeremy looked over to his left. Gauntlet had stepped away too, and he was halfway back to his own door. That left Talon and Jeremy standing in front of the elevator.
Talon shrugged. “I don’t know either. We’ve never gone to level orange before. Guess we have to wait and see.”
Talon turned his head to look at the television at the far end of the room. “We can turn on the TV. Can’t get anything live, but they probably loaded the games from last night.”
Jeremy shook his head. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes. You go ahead.”
Then, like the others, he walked into his room. The door closed behind him, and for the first time since the siren, Jeremy felt like he could breathe. It was good to be in his own space, alone with his thoughts. If security level orange was the real signal for a real emergency, Jeremy didn’t want to waste hi
s time watching a rerun of a basketball game.
He looked over the room and saw his Penn State sweatshirt draped over the back of his chair. It was odd to see something so familiar when so much else had changed. Then, for the first time in the last two days, Jeremy thought about home and his mom.
It wasn’t right how he left her—he knew that. He should have said more. Hell, maybe he should have just stayed in the first place. But now…
Jeremy pulled out the chair, sat down in front of the computer, and opened a new document on the screen. He started typing: Dear Mom
Nothing else. How do you write that letter? How can you try and say everything that you’ll ever have to say again—just in case?
Jeremy’s thoughts drifted to his dad. Did he know, driving to the hospital, what could happen? What would he have said in a letter? What piece of himself could he leave behind?
Jeremy looked up at the screen—at the flashing cursor. There was nothing to say—at least nothing worth putting in a letter. He closed the document and stood up. In the end, people would know what he wanted to say whether the words were spoken or not. He had to trust that. He had to believe they would know.
“Anoms! Report for your briefing,” Major Ellison’s voice thundered from the other room, muted by the heavy door, but still unmistakably clear.
Jeremy closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The waiting was over. It didn’t matter what came next. Whatever it was, it was here. Jeremy thought about his dad, and his dreams in the hospital, and his dad’s warning: You need to leave. Today.
It was too late for that now.
Jeremy opened his eyes and stepped out into the Rec Room.
Chapter 20
Most of the chairs around the conference table were already taken when Jeremy stepped into the room, and at first he was surprised. He assumed, for whatever reason, that this briefing would be like all the others with Ellison and Lara presenting a rundown of things to come. Now, seeing the crowd gathered at the table and even more people still standing just behind it, Jeremy realized how foolish that first idea was.
Colonel McCann sat on the opposite side of the table, his mouth held in a thin line and his eyes focused straight ahead. Major Ellison sat just to McCann’s right, and a man that Jeremy had never seen before sat on the other side of the colonel. This new man was thin and pale with his stringy blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. He sat at the table and yawned, and Jeremy thought he would look exactly the same if they were pulling up chairs for a Sunday dinner.
On this man’s other side sat Lara. Like the colonel, she sat perfectly still, but where McCann’s demeanor projected an air of confidence, the crease in Lara’s brow showed otherwise. Jeremy could see she was worried.
Behind the colonel, a dozen scientists stood in a rough line, all of them wearing their white lab coats, and all of them waiting for what would come next. Dr. Langer was standing among them. Jeremy saw him right away, and he thought the doctor looked just as panicked now as when they had split up in the hallway.
Jeremy walked toward the table, and he could feel everyone watching him. Then he realized—they were all waiting for him. Talon was already seated on the near side directly across from Lara, and Gauntlet stood in his familiar corner, watching them all. Nyx was just sitting down across from the colonel, and that left one open space for Jeremy—an empty seat across from Ellison. Where else? Jeremy pulled out the chair and sat down. It was a signal for the colonel to begin.
McCann rose to his feet. “At approximately 0800 hours this morning, I ordered Fort Blaney to initiate Security Level Orange protocols. This action was taken in direct response to a present and ongoing threat against American lives and interests. Shortly thereafter I was contacted by NORTHCOM. We have now been ordered to intervene, using all necessary and appropriate force to end this threat against our country. Special Agent Hayden, our liaison with the CIA, will tell you more."
At this, Colonel McCann sat down and the man with the stringy ponytail climbed to his feet. "Right. It seems a group of fifty armed men entered the Sears Tower in Chicago. Ten minutes later, we got this."
Agent Hayden nodded his head toward the television screen on the far wall. Jeremy turned in his chair to get a better look. At first, the screen was still black, but in the next second it flashed to life.
It showed a picture of a man with short white hair and olive skin creased with a thousand tiny wrinkles. The man's eyes were pale, and his beard of fine white whiskers was cropped close to his skin. He wore a navy blue suit and a white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar. He wore no tie. The face was familiar.
“That man on the screen is named Jericho Caine," Hayden said.
Jeremy already knew the name. He felt his stomach go tight.
Hayden continued. "Caine is the leader of the Red Moon terrorist group, so when he sticks up his head and makes a public address like this, we tend to listen."
The video on the television started to play; Caine was speaking in a low voice, "Brothers and sisters of the world, today, in the American city of Chicago, a new revolution is underway. Like all such times throughout history, this action is both regrettable and necessary. It is regrettable for what must be sacrificed. It is necessary because we can no longer continue under this Western oppression.”
Caine rubbed his hand back and forth across his whiskered jaw as he spoke. "We are only asking for what every man is entitled: our freedom. It is the one ideal treasured above all others in Western culture, and yet it is the basic human right which we are denied. And so we ask again, in Chicago, for our freedom. It is a simple request, and yet it is also impossible. Simple, because we only seek the freedom to live our lives in peace. Impossible, because the imperial powers of the Western world cannot fathom the lives we would choose for ourselves. They judge us as barbarians. And so they come with their guns and with their bombs to save us from our own ignorance—to save us from ourselves."
Caine rubbed his hand back and forth again across his whiskered chin. “For years we have fought the West for our freedom. We have lost husbands and wives to this bloodshed. Brothers and sisters. Grandchildren. And still we fight, always without hope for victory, for what hope remains when mortal men war against the gods of America? Like the heroes of ancient Greece, we needed a champion to rise. We needed a Prometheus to stand with us against those gods. And then, we were delivered.”
The camera pulled back, and sitting next to Caine was another man, but he was unlike anything Jeremy had ever seen before. This new man was huge. His shoulders crested above the top of Caine’s head, and they seemed impossibly broad. His face, just now coming into focus, looked almost shapeless. Jeremy could see a ridge where the man’s nose should have been and two shallow depressions in place of his eyes, but there was no mouth. Then, most striking of all, the man’s skin looked like polished bronze. Jeremy could see the light from the camera bouncing off the man’s chest, and the distorted image of Caine bending obtuse around the man’s shoulder. It was like he was forged from metal.
The video on the screen paused, and Hayden said, “That second man next to Caine is the reason we got called. He’s a suspected Anom designated by the code name Titan. I would pay extra attention to what comes next.”
The video resumed, but the image cut to a different scene. It seemed to be pre-recorded video now, granier than the original. At first it was a picture of Titan, sitting in a chair in front of a brown, sandstone wall. In the foreground, three men aimed their rifles at his bronze chest.
Caine continued speaking in a voiceover, his words rising to a fevered pitch. “The pleas of men may be ignored by the gods, forgotten in their cruelty, but you won’t ignore us now!”
As he spoke, the three men opened fire with their machine guns. Jeremy watched as bright orange sparks danced across the Anom’s chest. Then Titan rose and started advancing toward the men. The three soldiers dropped out their magazines, reloaded, and fired again. Titan still came forward. He didn’t stagger back against the
storm of bullets. He looked like he could have been crossing a street.
Caine’s voice was louder now, “We will never stop. We will never rest. America will run out of bullets, and still we’ll come—still we’ll fight.”
The image on the screen changed again. It was a close-up of Titan as he stood facing the sandstone wall. He pulled back his right fist and punched. His whole hand disappeared inside the wall. He pulled his arm back, and Jeremy could see a hole the size of a cantaloupe in the sandstone. Titan punched again. Another hole. Again. Another hole. He may as well have been punching through paper. He punched again, and now the camera zoomed into the crater, and Jeremy could see the blue sky from the other side of the wall.
Caine was screaming, “We will fight as men and women with hope! We will make America bleed as we have bled! We will fight until the cost of your tyranny is more than you can pay!”
The picture on the screen changed again. Titan was standing far away in the desert now, his arms outstretched on either side of his body. The camera panned to the right to show a man dressed in all black, kneeling in the sand with an outdated RPG launcher propped over his shoulder. The camera panned back to Titan. Then there was a loud roar, and an explosion where Titan was standing. For a second, a dark cloud of smoke and sand filled the screen, but as it fell away, Titan still stood, his arms still outstretched. Then, slowly, he raised both his fists above his head and pumped his arms up and down. Loud cheers could be heard off-camera.
Then the image changed again, back to the picture of Caine sitting beside his champion. His voice became low and measured. “A list of 100 names is being delivered as we speak to the Embassy of the United States in Amman. They are the names of our brothers and sisters held captive by your empire. You have six hours to release them—to grant them their freedom—or American lives will suffer.”
ANOM: Awakening (The ANOM Series Book 1) Page 20
